This is shameful, she thought, her face in her hands as she sobbed, to come to this woman’s house and cry my heart out! But Eva seemed used to people crying at her table. That or she was lost in knowledge of the events that Delphine had recounted. Eva murmured, “Shoosh.” From time to time she put a hand on Delphine’s shoulder and provided more coffee.
“You weep seldom,” she said, which made Delphine feel somehow impossibly strong and heroic.
“True,” said Delphine, though it was the second time she’d wept since her return to this town, where her father would always be known, now, as the man too drunk to hear three people dying in his cellar.
LEAVING THE BUTCHER SHOP with a chunk of wrapped lard, the bacon, three oranges, six onions, bread, and a stick of summer sausage, Delphine thought it might be possible for her to face her father once again. She drove toward the house, bumping clumsily along, skirting the larger pits and holes. Meeting Eva had put her into a dreamy state — it was much like being in love but it was also very different. That Eva had taken notice of her, even taken her into the kitchen, that Eva had given every sign of wanting to know Delphine, it was all too sudden a pleasure. By the time Delphine turned down the long, sorry curve and caught first sight of the little house, she decided it was probably a one-time thing, a kindness on Eva’s part. Or that her weeping would have surely frightened her off. Even so, she was very grateful that Eva had invited her into her kitchen.
“I’ll have a kitchen like that someday,” she said out loud.
The sight of the sheriff’s car and the gangly boy-deputy, an undertaker’s hearse, and a couple of curious neighbors, as well as Cyprian disconsolately juggling in the corner of the far field, reminded her that day would not be coming soon.
THE TOWN FUNERAL DIRECTOR and mortician, Aurelius Strub, was in charge of hauling out the bodies, along with his wife, Benta, and his young niece and apprentice mortuary assistant, Delphine’s friend, Clarisse. Clarisse stood to inherit the business, Strub’s Funerary, the most advanced and well-respected funeral practice in that part of the state. Her future had complicated her high school relationships, as one by one her classmates realized that if they lived their lives in Argus, they would eventually wind up in the resolute, rubber-gloved hands of Clarisse Strub. Pretty Clarisse, who got an A+ in the dissection of a flatworm. Flirtatious Clarisse, who already knew the art of using makeup in the next life, as well as this one. Clarisse, whose brilliant and mocking glance had dimmed for a time when she suffered a secret and shocking infection, the cause of which was never determined. To cure the disease, which may have originated with a body whose syphilitic condition was unknown, for even then she had assisted in the embalming room from time to time, under her aunt’s supervision, Clarisse underwent a complex long-term treatment. Her cure was overseen by Doctor Heech, who insisted that a dead body could not possibly have transmitted the disease and viewed her infection with a sober suspicion. His method of treatment consisted of intravenous salvarsan and deep-tissue mercury injections, both extremely unpleasant. Clarisse was toughened to them, but Delphine had quailed to see her poked. She’d held her friend’s hand all through, nonetheless. The only day they’d not minded was the day when the treatments had made Clarisse’s gums bleed and Heech had conditioned them with a cocaine rub. Delphine was the only one besides Doctor Heech who knew what had happened, and the only person, other than family members, who was ever admitted into the sanctum of the Strub Funerary basement.
Clarisse wore a sacklike white gown, a green mask, gloves of india rubber, and smoked glasses, but her curly black hair gave her away, and even the hard realities of her vocation hadn’t dulled the singular light in her face. The sight of Delphine caused her to rip off her mask and gloves and then, torn between excitement at seeing her friend and the gravity of the situation, she threw out her hands and stepped closer. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, for the Strub family practiced resolute control and reverence in the presence of the dead, and she should not be seen joking about with a friend. Finding that they were alone, Clarisse screwed her face into a mask of hideous intensity. They had acted together in town theater as first and second witch in Macbeth.
“When shall we three meet again,” she hissed. “In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
“When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won,” Delphine went on.
The two could have gone on and on like this, for they knew practically the entire play as they’d understudied Lady Macbeth, and everyone else in the cast, but Aurelius appeared with a grim-looking package, and Clarisse made signs for talking later. Delphine mimed sympathy. They could communicate perfectly with facial expressions. Clarisse twisted up her face and from one side of her mouth croaked, “Like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.”
Before she returned to her work, with a flash of intrigue, she pointed to Delphine’s tent, across the field, and at Cyprian, who with his shirt off was practicing his gymnastic exercises and his balances on a chair dragged from the kitchen. Clarisse winked over the hygienic green mask and then turned to continue with her difficult tasks. They were going to have to vat the bodies right in the yard, Delphine saw. A three-sided canvas screen had been set up just beyond the door and the smell of formalin and rubbing alcohol came from behind it. Jugs of distilled water were neatly lined up on the grass. There was a sense about the scene, now, of efficiency and seriousness. When the Strubs appeared to take charge of the dead, there always was a sense of relief. Clarisse was still regarded as a bit exuberant, but the Strubs generally developed the right temperament for the job, a matter-of-fact sympathy not at all unctuous, oily, or sweet. The town relied upon them. The dead were complicated in their helplessness, and made everyone around them helpless, too, except the Strubs.
As Delphine walked her packages out to the tent, she saw that Cyprian had made a little fireplace out of rocks. He was proving remarkably handy, she thought, in ways odd and wonderful. For instance, the fireplace was not a lazy round circle of rocks, it was carefully fit stone on mortared stone. There was a chimney, a little shelf. A hook set into the mortar. He was fixing up the chicken coop. And, too, there was his beauty.
As Cyprian turned toward her with a gentle sideways glance his profile caught her breath. His eyes were deeply set, a resinous coal, and his nose was a classical line with perfect teardrops of nostrils. There was a slight curve to his lips, and an eerie perfection to his teeth when he smiled. It was that last, the even whiteness of his teeth, she decided now, that might possibly make his face too handsome to be handsome. Yes, she imagined, regarding him more critically, there was something to that. Some imperfection makes a face much stronger looking, gives it points of interest. Or am I just jealous? Protecting my own heart?
She held out the packages. He took them from her and added them to his juggling routine, happily catching and tossing them before him and behind him, in the air, under a leg lifted straight out and pointy-toed like a ballerina’s, and then crooked to the side like a pissing dog’s.