A Wedding on the Banks (32 page)

“She was younger than me,” Pearl whispered. And it would kill Sicily, too, if she wasn't careful. Fear was the worst enemy of any young woman in Mattagash, in any small town. Fear of big ideas, big decisions, big towns. By the time they became older women, the fear had already turned into anger, tightening their mouths, curling their hands into arthritic fists. Even if they're not afraid to run, as Pearl ran, as Amy Joy tried to, the anger follows them. It'll go to Connecticut, to big cities like Chicago, all the way west to California. Anger knows no geographical limitations, and it needs no bus ticket.

“If she's not careful,” Pearl thought, “it will kill Amy Joy, too. It's in our blood, this thing, this disease. The men used to get rid of it by beating workhorses in the woods. Now they run their machines into early graves. They work hard and drink hard and die hard. But women? All we can do is fight our wars with words, instead of real bullets.”

She stood for a long time and traced the outline of the summer kitchen, the snow on its sunny roof already beginning to drip from the eaves, to go back to the earth, to nourish the barren soil. She herself had come back to Mattagash to be nourished. If Marvin returned from Watertown with the intent to buy Cushman's Funeral Home for his son, Pearl had a plan.

“Give the business in Portland to Junior,” she would plead with her husband. “You take the one in Watertown. You need a good rest anyway. You're tired. Your health isn't that good anymore. Give the Portland business to Junior, or
give
me
up.”

Pearl relaxed the curtain and let spring go back about its business. When the weather was just right, she would clean the summer kitchen. She would bury all her hatchets, the ones she'd been lugging down the years. She'd dispose of the anger.

“I'm an old dog,” Pearl said, “but I'm still learning some new tricks.”

***

“How'd you get here, then?” Marvin asked Junior, when he'd been told of the Cadillac's demise.

“I thumbed a ride from a couple of local yokels,” Junior said, remembering the two men in the pickup truck. “In a Ford,” he added.

“Well, once we've met with Cushman, we'll stop by the police station and make a report,” Marvin assured his distraught son.

“I suppose we better,” Junior said, his voice far away from his thoughts. “I got something to pick up over there, anyway.” Junior stared at his father.

“I got a lot to tell you,” Junior confessed softly. “I didn't want to spoil your breakfast or upset you in any way before our meeting with Cushman. I thought it best to wait till afterward.”

“I appreciate that,” said Marvin, and he meant it.

***

“So why are you wanting to sell?” Marvin asked Ben Cushman, once the three men had settled comfortably in his office to discuss the life of the funeral home.

“I guess you could say the winters are getting to me,” Ben said. Marvin liked him instinctively. Ben Cushman was an honest man. Whatever he told Marvin about his business, Marvin would believe. “They make my bones ache,” Ben added. “My only child, a daughter, lives in Florida with my two grandchildren. She thinks I'll like it there.” Ben smiled.

“I can understand what you mean about the winters,” Junior said, nervous. “The springs up here are bad enough!” Marvin frowned. You let a man belittle his own territory, his home turf, because it's his right. But you don't agree with him, and you certainly don't go one up on him. When would Junior ever learn? But Ben Cushman was the kind of man to overlook men like Junior.

“This profession continually reminds me how fleeting time is,” Ben went on. “I want to know those grandkids now, not someday.” Marvin agreed, although he didn't tell Ben that he considered him a lucky man to live in a different state from his grandkids. He didn't tell Ben that there were some grandkids you should never get to know.

“Mind if we look around?” Marvin asked.

“We promise not to disturb anyone.” Junior grinned as his father grimaced.

“Help yourselves,” Ben Cushman said. “I'll be here when you finish.”

Marvin and Junior toured the chapel, and the four rooms where northern houseguests had been reposing for family and friends ever since Cushman's Funeral Home opened its doors. Even old-timers from Mattagash, who vowed never to darken the door of an establishment that made money from the dead, were hastened quietly down to Cushman's once their lips were sealed forever. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Funerals were for the living anyway. There were still a few wakes taking place in living rooms here and there along the river, but this at-home notion had become quaint even in remotest Mattagash, barbaric to some.

Marvin and Junior stopped in the coffee lounge for a quick cup before heading downstairs to the embalming room.

“We have no clients in there right now,” Ben Cushman had informed his visitors earlier. “Check it out.” This room was, Marvin was telling Junior, by far the most important room in funeralology.

“It can make you or break you, son,” Marvin had managed to say just as a small voice broke into the conversation. As blood drained from Junior's face, as Junior's face embalmed itself, Marvin Ivy looked into violet eyes, at a perfectly chiseled nose, an arrogant chin. Monique Tessier.

“I said good afternoon, gentlemen.” Monique had brought forth her best business voice to match her mauve wool suit. “Mr. Cushman told me where I might find you.” There was no response from either man until Junior said, in an almost inaudible whisper, “I can explain this.”

“I think you'd better,” Marvin whispered back. He wasn't sure if Ben Cushman had followed Miss Tessier out of his office and was standing somewhere nearby.

“Have you had a chance to have that little talk with your father yet?' Monique asked Junior. Marvin looked sharply at his son, who could see Cushman's Funeral Home disappearing like a smashed toy before his eyes.

“She's lying,” Junior whispered.

“Oh, Junie.” Monique's tone was playful. “I'll help you stand up to him. Don't be afraid.”

“I tell you, she's lying!” Junior's forehead broke into a shiny sweat. “The last thing I said to her when she dropped me off at Una's Cafe was that I was going to tell you everything.”

“And so you
are
telling him everything,” Monique said.

“I thought a couple of yokels gave you a ride,” said Marvin.

“I was waiting until the deal was closed,” Junior whined, “so I wouldn't upset you.”

“Don't whine,” Marvin scolded. “For Chrissakes, please don't yammer.”

“He wants a divorce,” said Monique unabashedly.

“No!” Now Junior
was
disturbing the houseguests at Cushman's Funeral Home. “I tell you she's lying. She came to Mattagash on her own.”

“Oh, really, Junie.” Monique was patronizing. “I didn't even know that horrible place existed.”

Marvin looked at Junior, who looked at his feet.

“You wait outside,” Marvin said sternly to Monique Tessier. “
You
, come downstairs with me so we can straighten this out.”

The embalming room was not the most perfect place for a father and son heart-to-heart. But the thick doors would afford them privacy, and most likely Monique Tessier wouldn't follow them in there. Marvin closed the door then stood, slack-jawed and steely-eyed, as he stared at his son. Junior wiped the upstairs sweat from his forehead and looked at the ceiling. Warm tears pushed out onto the crow's feet around his eyes and then rolled, unchecked, down his face.

“Don't cry,” Marvin said. “For Chrissakes, don't cry.”

“I can't help it. None of that is true.”

“What the hell is going on in your head?” Marvin shouted. He slammed a fist into his palm and then began to pace around the embalming table. “I give you chance after chance after chance. I offer you a business, for Chrissakes. I pay you far more than you should be paid.
You
should pay
me
, just for letting you work for me. Do you know that?”

“I know it,” Junior agreed. He mopped his face with his tie.

“I even let that miserable excuse for a grandson into my business to keep his dope-crazy ass out of jail!” Junior winced.
Oh
Jesus, don't let him find out that his grandson's ass is in jail as he speaks!

“Yes, sir,” Junior wept. “But I tell you the woman's lying. I put my best foot forward and now she's messed it up.”

“I oughtta put my best foot into your fat ass,” Marvin threatened, the blue veins in his temples working like earthworms beneath the skin.

Then it happened. Everything exploded in his chest, in the interior of Marvin Ivy's pear-shaped heart. He clutched at his breast.

“What's the matter?” Junior yelled, as Marvin fought for air.

“Pearl,” was all Marvin could whisper. Oxygen wheezed in and out of his nostrils as though from a small bellows. He reached a hand toward the counter, grabbed at the embalming machine to hold himself up, but his legs buckled and he went down on his knees. What he had intended to say,
take
care
of
Pearl
, what had seemed important to him, was no longer meaningful.

“First,” Marvin Ivy told himself, with clinical detachment, “they will disinfect my eyes, my nose, and my mouth with disinfecting spray, before they close them for good.”

“Help!” Junior yelled, hoping Ben Cushman would hear him from beyond the thick doors, from beyond the veil of this newest tragedy. “Daddy,” Junior moaned.

On his knees, Marvin was eye level with the counter and noticed for the first time an empty McDonald's drink container, its straw at half-mast.

“My God, that's beautiful,” he thought, as the yellow arches shone like halos and reached to the high heavens. Marvin fell backward, flat on his back. He turned his head and a bloody spittle ran from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh please, please, please,” Junior petitioned some god, some maker, perhaps, of human beings, and embalming machines, and Big Macs.

“Then,” thought Marvin, “they will raise the blood vessels and inject the preservative.” He looked up at the table looming above him, at his son, white-faced and grieving. Now Marvin could see the old textbooks from embalming school, could see inside the covers where he had hastily scrawled “Marvin R. Ivy, Portland, Maine.” There had been no need to put “Sr.” back then. There had been no “Junior.” There was just Marvin and Pearl, newlyweds on the short road down through life.
Take
care
of
Pearl.
He wondered what year he had written his name thusly, what day, by Christ, the very minute, the very second in time.

“Time,” thought Marvin. “What a foolish concept. It's all one straight, continuous line, if names written in books over forty years ago are still dripping their ink.”

“Stay right here,” Junior whimpered, as though Marvin intended to skip some light fantastic out of Watertown. “I'll go get an ambulance.”

“Ambulances,” thought Marvin. “Noisy things.” He'd heard enough of them in his life. No need to run one more by him. He felt Junior checking his wrist for a pulse, for a little encouraging word from the old ticker. There was none. There was no news to send.

“We're closing down shop, kiddo,” Marvin thought. He was happy to learn that he still possessed a sense of humor, and that at least some houseguests go out laughing. He wished he could share this tidbit with Pearl. “Then they'll close and seal the incisions. They'll wash me, and dry me, and dress me in my finest.”

Junior had seen death enough to recognize its tracks. Marvin's face had turned clay-colored, his body tones slack as yarn. As Junior took one of the doughy hands up into his own, Marvin looked down and saw the action, saw his own colorless face, his own eyes riveted on the ceiling.

“I'm sorry,” Junior wept.

“Silly,” Marvin thought. “I'm not there. I'm up here.”

“Daddy,” Junior cried, and placed Marvin's limp hand across his chest. He looked down at Marvin's blue lips, at his father's unmoving chest, at a tiny little vein on Marvin's nose that Junior had been too busy with life to notice. Marvin Ivy Sr. was soundly dead.

“Daddeeeeeeee,” Junior wailed. “Don't die with this between us.”

Marvin Ivy bounced like a soft balloon across the ceiling. He looked down one last time on the body that housed his earthly son.

“For Chrissakes,” Marvin thought, before he cut himself free from the idle, dream-stricken earth. Before his consciousness failed him. “Don't
yammer
!”

“He shouldn't have died like this,” Junior whispered, and reached out gently to close the blank eyes. What he didn't know was what Marvin Ivy had learned in an instant, before his life had sputtered out, that it doesn't matter how you die. All that matters is how you live.

***

Monique Tessier had just finished a cup of Sanka at Una's Valley Cafe when an ambulance roared past the cafe window and into Cushman's Funeral Home. There was an irony for you. But Monique kept a watchful eye, as she had for the past fifteen minutes. She was quite sure either one or the other, Marvin or Junior, father or son, would come outside eventually and offer her a deal.

“Just like Monty Hall,” Monique said, and smiled. To show them what a good sport she was, she might even settle for as little as ten thousand, though she hoped the Ivys would be gentlemen enough not to quibble. What she saw instead was Junior hurriedly tagging along after a stretcher, which disappeared into the ambulance, Junior behind it. Then they were gone in a flash of noise and siren.

Monique paid for her coffee and walked calmly across the street to Cushman's Funeral Home. Inside she found Ben Cushman slumped on the sofa in his office.