1 Straight to Hell (5 page)

I rarely attend funerals.  It isn’t that I don’t know people who have died, it’s just that I show an appalling lack of decorum in these situations.  Nerves, I guess.  But all I need to do is walk through the doors of a funeral home, and I start to snigger.

The day I went to make my mother’s arrangements was no exception.

I’d spent the morning in a daze.  I did all of the normal things like shower, dress, and make my bed, but the routine seemed dreamlike and fuzzy at the edges.  My mind clicked away, making notes of all the details I had to take care of, yet I accidentally poured orange juice into my coffee and nearly left the house without a coat.

Surprisingly, my stepsister took control of the situation.  After the girls went to school, Jas offered to drive me to the funeral home.  I was touched.  Jasmine is not known for her ability to offer moral support in times of crisis.  For example, when I told my stepsister that my ex-husband was having an affair, she said, “So what did you do to make him want someone else?”

But today was different.  Jasmine looked uncharacteristically solemn in her navy suit, and she hugged me tightly after breakfast, something that brought me to tears.  “Your mom was the best,” she said.  “I’ll miss her.”

The first part of that statement was, of course, false, and we both knew it.  But the second part was true.  I’d always suspected that Jasmine kind of envied me for the type of mother I had.  Jas’s mother is nice enough, but she’s very businesslike and doesn’t have a lot of imagination.  My mother, on the other hand, was a spitfire.  She frequently hosted poetry slams in her living room.  She took bartending lessons when she was sixty-five, and could out-drink any of her college-age classmates.  She was always the first to throw a party and the last to leave one.  People loved her.  I probably would have loved her if she hadn’t been my mother.

The funeral home was like every other funeral home I’ve been to: a ponderously dreary place of heavy draperies and thick carpeting and the sickening smell of freshly-cut, hothouse flowers.  The funeral director, Harold Black, was a young man doing his very best to look as old as possible.  His thinning hair and gold-framed glasses marked him as nearly sixty rather than barely thirty.  When we all sat down together, Harold gave me a mournful look.  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

I nodded and dabbed my eyes with a damp tissue.  I’d cried most of the night, and was surprised that I could still manage to produce a tear.  It also surprised me how sad I was over my mother’s death.  She’d popped in and out of my life for the last thirty-four years as infrequently as a warm day in January, and her timing was always incredibly bad.  She would show up a week after my birthday parties or a month after graduation.  And then she’d bring gifts so inappropriate that it was obvious she had no clue what was going on with me.  Like the time she bought me a Barbie doll for Christmas, and I was fifteen.  Or the time she’d shown up with a box of expensive chocolates, right after the doctors had finally determined that chocolate gave me migraines.

Carrie was more an annoyance than anything else.  A heartbreaking reminder that, although I did have a mother, she didn’t give a shit about me.  As a kid, I’d done everything I could to get more of her attention.  As an adult, I wished she would leave me the hell alone.  And now I couldn’t stop crying.

I let Jasmine take over the arrangements.  She loves shopping, even shopping of the funerary variety, and she happily flipped through catalogs full of coffins.  As I listened in on their conversation, I noticed that Harold frequently referred to ‘Mother’.  As in, ‘Mother would look nice in blue, I think.’ and ‘Did Mother like roses?’

For a second, I wondered if Harold had some kind of Norman Bates mother fetish, perhaps subscribing to Norman’s philosophy that, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”  So when Harold said, “Mother would like violin music,” I snorted so loud both Harold and Jas looked up in alarm.  Trying to stifle my laughter of course did nothing but make me
want
to laugh.  I wondered if Harold had used his funerary skills to preserve his own mother and had her posed in a rocking chair in the basement of the funeral home.  I sniggered a little.  Maybe it was time to think twice about taking showers.  By now, I was shaking, helpless with suppressed laughter.  Tears rolled from my eyes.

But then I realized he meant
my
mother.  My mother who would look good in blue and like roses.  My mother who would like violin music.  My laughter turned into a little sob.  “She really is dead,” I croaked and began crying in earnest.

Jasmine was about to put her arm around my shoulders, but Harold was quicker.  He scooted over to me and offered me his handkerchief.  “This is hard for you, I know.”  His peppermint-scented breath puffed in my face.  “Can I get you anything?  A glass of water maybe?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”  To refocus myself, I picked up a catalog and began thumbing through it.  The caskets were made of polished wood and chrome, as lovely as fine furniture.  And twice as costly.  The prices made me gasp.  Even the least expensive one was double my rent check.

I glanced at what else Jasmine had been ordering: an immense casket spray, two enormous flower arrangements, a string quartet to play music?  Even if Carrie had possessed the means to pay for the funeral, I’d not be getting her money until it went through probate, and that would take months.

The room seemed to fold over on itself, suddenly becoming far too small.  “I can’t pay for any of this,” I said.  “Jas, I can hardly scrape enough together for groceries this week.”  The insurance company had yet to reimburse me for the damage to the house, claiming the fire wasn’t accidental, and I hadn’t worked in a few weeks because of the Christmas break.  My savings account balance was zero, and my checking account was very close to being overdrawn.

“Just put it on a credit card,” Jasmine said, giving me one of her famous what’s-the-big-deal looks.  She pulled out her phone and began texting.

Harold gave me a reassuring smile.  “We do have a payment plan.”

Nowadays, everything has a payment plan.  Cars, doctor’s offices, computer systems.  I should know since I was on every damn one of them at the time.   “I’m sorry, but I can’t afford this.”  I didn’t want him to think I was so cheap that I’d send my mother off in a pine box, but I was desperate.

I’d expected Harold’s smile to fade when he realized what a piker I was, but it remained as bright as ever.  “Not a problem, Ms. Straight.  Not a problem.”  He picked up the notepad he’d been using and crossed off several items. Then he added figures on his calculator, mumbling to himself as he punched in the numbers.

He showed me the final total with a triumphant smile.  The sight of it made my stomach drop.  Even pared down to the basics, the funeral would bankrupt me.

“It’s just so much,” I said.  “How about cremation?  What does that cost?”  I wondered if Carrie could see me down here haggling over her funeral like a tourist at a Middle-Eastern bazaar.  I prayed that she understood.

Harold re-totaled the numbers.  The result was only slightly less disastrous than the one before it.  Seeing my stricken face, he said, “I understand if you’re feeling overwhelmed.”  He slid so close to me that our knees touched.  “I don’t want you to be distressed.”

I continued to cry.  “You don’t know the half of it.”

“But I
do
understand,” he said.  “You’re feeling so vulnerable, aren’t you?”  Very softly, he began to rub my shoulder.  “There’s nothing I hate to see more than the tears of a beautiful woman.”  His other hand sought out my knee. 

My jaw dropped.  What the hell was he doing?   My first instinct was to jump up and slap his face.  But at that moment, a thought blipped into my head like an instant-message popping up on a computer screen:
You’re a succubus now.  You’ve seduced him.

The previous day’s experiences hadn’t been erased from my memory, but my mother’s death had pushed them to a dark corner of my mind.   The events seemed distant, like something I’d watched on TV instead of something that had happened to me personally.  But now, as Harold the undertaker stroked my knee, I began to realize that all of it was true.  The trip to hell, the meeting with Miss Spry, and worst of all, the contract made by Sarah Goodswain, all of that was real.  The fact that Harold’s hand was now wandering up my thigh was unmistakable evidence.

Next to me, Jasmine was too deep into her text conversation to notice what was happening.  She laughed at something, then let her fingers clickety-click away at the minute keyboard.

It was obvious that if I didn’t get a hold of the situation, Harold would pull me into the nearest casket for a quick tumble.  I had no idea that the demon’s powers would work so quickly or so well, but there had to be a way to control it.  As Harold began to stroke my hair, I frantically tried to remember what Miss Spry had told me about the demon.  Hadn’t she said it was a separate entity?

Desperate, I gave it a mental command,
Down girl!  I’m in charge here.

For a moment, nothing happened.  Then I felt a quiver inside as the demon responded.  I realized that for the past few minutes, I’d been heating up like a menopausal woman in the throes of a hot flash, until I was enveloped in a warm glow. 
Cool it
, I told the demon.  She did.

Harold blinked as if waking from a deep sleep.  I was pretty sure I could have regained complete control, but I never got to find out for sure because, at that moment, Jasmine noticed what was happening.  “Oh my God!”  She dropped her phone and was on her feet in an instant.  “Are you groping my sister?”

Harold yanked his hands back as if he’d been burned.  “No!”  He looked horrified but baffled, too.  As if he only now realized that maybe stroking a grieving woman’s leg was not in the best of taste.  “I mean, I’m sorry if I upset you, Ms. Straight.”  He was blushing down to the roots of his baby-fine hair.  “I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to maul her?”  Jasmine swung her purse at his head and caught him in the ear.  Luckily for him, it was a tiny bag, hardly bigger than a lunch sack.  “You sick piece of shit!”

I kept ordering the demon down, stuffing it further and further inside me until, finally, it completely fled and I became plain, old Lilith once more.  Relieved, I sagged back on my chair.

Jasmine continued to rain blows on poor Harold who cowered behind his arms.

“It’s okay, Jasmine,” I said.  Though it wasn’t okay.  I felt sick and dirty.  In desperate need of a shower.

I would have bolted for the nearest exit except then my father made an appearance.  My father, Simon Yoshida, is the kindest, gentlest, most honest man on the planet.  Which is probably why he (a) is terrible at his job as a tax attorney and (b) just the sucker my mother needed to pawn off her three-year-old daughter, so she could leave to do God knows what.  In fact, I blame my mother’s treatment of Simon for the perpetually bewildered expression on his face.  After thirty-one years, I think he still doesn’t know what hit him.

“That man made a pass at Lilith,” Jasmine said.  She swiped her purse at Harold again, but this time he ducked.

Simon was used to his daughter, and didn’t take her theatrics seriously.  “Settle down,” he told her.  He kissed the top of her head, then came over to me.  When he put his arms around me, I felt like I had when I was a little girl: safe and loved.  I hugged him back tightly, wrinkling his suit.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Carrie,” Simon said.  “What happened?  I only caught part of Jasmine’s message.”

He was only saying this to be nice.  I knew because I’d overheard Jas the night before as she made calls on my behalf.  Most people, she texted: L’s mom died.  Sux huh?  But for our father, who couldn’t work a microwave much less text, she’d actually talked to him and said, “Lil’s mom died.  But don’t worry, there’s a sale at Macy’s so you can go buy yourself a nice suit for the funeral.”

“It was a stroke,” I said.

He looked concerned.  My father has a heart bigger than the shoe department at Nordstrom’s, and I know he still cared about my mom, even if she’d ditched him over thirty years ago.  “How did it happen?  Was she alone?”

“Please,” I said.  “This is Carrie we’re talking about.  She was at a couples’ retreat with her boyfriend.  They were in a hot tub with about ten other people when it happened.”