“Is that girl all right?” Mary said. “You’d think she’d change clothes first.”
Billy was waiting on the top porch step, guiding his mother back with his intense, unswerving stare. Alvareen stood behind him in a shiny black party dress. “Dinner’s set,” she called. “Come on in, you poor souls, I got everything you’d wish for right on the table.” When Mrs. Emerson came near enough Alvareen patted her arm. “Now, now, it’s finished now,” she said. Mrs. Emerson said, “I’m quite all right, Emmeline.”
“Shows you’re not,” said Alvareen. “I’m Alvareen, not Emmeline, but don’t you mind. Come on in, folks.”
Then she led the way into the house, shaking her head and moving her lips, no doubt preparing what she would say to her family when she got home: “Poor thing was so tore up she didn’t know me. Didn’t know who I was. Called me Emmeline. Didn’t know me.” Behind her, Melissa stumbled against a step and laid one hand on Matthew’s arm, but so lightly that the stumbling seemed artificial. Margaret followed, swinging a weed that she had yanked from the roadside. Mary bent to scoop up Billy, and at the end of the line came Aunt Dorothy, talking steadily to Peter although he didn’t appear to be listening. “Now what I want to know is, who made the arrangements? Don’t you people believe in the old-fashioned way of doing things? First no wake, no one at the funeral home, just the remains waiting all alone. Then that scrappy little service with hymns I surely never heard of, and the casket closed so that I couldn’t pay my — why was the casket closed?”
“I asked it to be,” Matthew said. “I thought it would be easier.”
“Easier!” She paused in the doorway, her mouth open, a wrinkled, scrawny caricature of Mrs. Emerson. “Easier, you say! My dear Matthew, death is never going to be easy. We accept, we endure. We used to put them in the parlor. Now you’re telling me — or was he, um, I hope the bullet didn’t—”
Nobody rescued her. She closed her mouth and entered the house, leaving Peter horror-struck behind her. “Did it?” he whispered, and Matthew said, “No, of course not. Go on in.” (And pictured, clearer than Peter there before him, Timothy’s dead, toneless face, so solemn that it had to be a mockery — much worse than blood or signs of pain, although he never could have explained that to Peter.)
Alvareen stood scolding in the dining room. Nobody was coming straight to the table. They were milling in the hallway, or heading for bathrooms, or going off to put away hats and gloves. “You’re breaking my heart,” Alvareen said. “Here, little Billy, you’ll pay me mind.” She hoisted him into a chair with a dictionary on it and tied a napkin around his neck. He ducked his round yellow head to examine the tablecloth fringe. There was always something he was checking up on — as if he considered himself the advance scout for the grandchildren yet to be born. He peered at people suspiciously, drew back to study Mrs. Emerson when she kissed him, cautiously surveyed all offerings from his aunts and uncles. Sometimes he repeated whole conversations between his relatives, word for word, out of context, as exact as a spy’s tape recording. “ ‘Where you going, Melissa?’ ‘Out for a walk, can’t stand it here.’ ‘When’ll you be back?’ ‘ ’Spect me when you see me.’ ”
“ ‘Why don’t I ever hear from you, Peter?’ ” he said now, and then frowned at his silverware, as if turning the question over for all possible implications.
When they were finally seated, their elbows touched. No one would have guessed how many people were missing. Alvareen had chosen her own menu: ham and roast beef, three kinds of vegetables, mashed potatoes and baked potatoes and sweet potatoes. “Oh, my,” Mrs. Emerson said, and she sighed and refolded her napkin and sat back without taking a bite. Only Margaret had any appetite. She ate silently and steadily — a lanky-haired, pudgy, flat-faced girl. Beside her, Billy whacked his fork rhythmically against the table edge. “In a bottom drawer, under the tea-towels,” he chanted. “In a bottom—” “Cut that out, mister,” Mary said. She buttered a roll and laid it on his plate. “Eat up and hush.”
“In a bottom—”
“It was nice of Father Lewis to do the services,” Mrs. Emerson said.
“Nice?” said Mary.
“Well, he could have refused. He had the right, in a case of … case like this.”
“I’d like to see him try,” Mary said. She had changed since the days when she lived at home. She looked calmer, softer around the edges, especially now when she was expecting another baby. Her face, with its lipsticked mouth and pale eyes, was settling along the jawline, and she wore her dark hair medium-length, average-styled, marked with crimp-lines from metal curlers. Yet while her looks had softened, her opinions had hardened. She passed judgment on everything, in her mother’s sharp, definite voice. She was forever ready to turn belligerent. Motherhood had affected her in the way it did she-bears, but not only in matters relating to her child. “You know what I’d have said if he refused,” she said. “I’d have marched straight up to him. Oh, he’d be sorry he ever mentioned it. Quit that, Billy. Give it to Mother. ‘Father Lewis,’ I’d say, I’d say straight to his face—”
“But he didn’t,” Margaret said.
“What?”
“What’s the point?”
“Oh, Margaret, where are you, off in a daze some place? We were talking about—”
“I know what you were talking about. What’s the point? He didn’t refuse, he never said a word about it. He went right ahead and performed the services.”
“Well, I was only—”
“Funerals are for the living,” said Mrs. Emerson. “That’s what all the morticians’ ads say.”
“Of course, Mother,” Mary said. “No one denies it.”
“Well, Father Lewis was very kind to me. Very thoughtful, very considerate. I don’t want to disappoint you children in any way, but the fact is that I have never felt all that religious. I just didn’t have the knack, I suppose. Now, Father Lewis knows that well but did it stop him? No. He came and spent time, he offered his sympathy, he never even mentioned the manner of Timothy’s going. He was no help at all, of course, but you can’t say he didn’t try.”
“No, of course not,” Mary said.
“The trouble with ministers,” said Mrs. Emerson, “is that they’re not women. There he was talking about young life carried off in its prime. What do I care about the prime? I’m thinking about the morning sickness, labor pains, colic, mumps — all for nothing. All come to nothing. You have no idea what a trouble twins are to raise.”
“Can’t we get off this subject?” Melissa said.
“Well, it is on my mind, Melissa.”
“I don’t care, you’re making me nervous. All this talk about Timothy, who has just played a terrible trick on us and left us holding the bag. Hymns. Sermons. Religion. Why do we bother?”
“Melissa!”
“What. There’s nothing wrong with what he did, it was his own life to take. But we don’t have to sit around discussing it forever, do we?”
“That’s quite enough,” said Mrs. Emerson, and then she set her glass down and turned to Alvareen, who was just coming in with more rolls. “Everything is delicious, Alvareen.”
“How can you tell? You ain’t eat a bite.”
“Well, it looks delicious.”
“It is,” said Mary, taking over. “You must give me the recipe for the gravy, Alvareen. Is it onion? Is this something you get from your people?”
“All I done was—”