A Wedding on the Banks (33 page)

“Funny,” he said. His hands were shaking. “Funny, but I never get used to it.”

“What happened?” Monique asked. Her voice was coming from another woman. Her voice was coming from a woman desperate enough to commit blackmail.

“Marvin Ivy is dead,” Ben Cushman said, and a silly noise, almost a giggle, warbled in his throat.

“I just want you to know,” Monique said vaguely, wishing she could say it to Marvin, and to Junior, but saying it to Ben instead, as their proxy. “I want you to know that my father beat me for years. And then my ex-husband beat me. I didn't deserve that. I deserved something better. I deserved something nice. I just want you to know that.” Then she closed the office door and left Ben Cushman sitting alone on the sofa, where just minutes ago Marvin Ivy had been talking, and laughing, and living. Ben Cushman had never gotten over the ironic suddenness of death, the boldness of it. Death had balls, there was no doubt about it.

“Well,” Ben Cushman said, to any lingering ghosts who might still be close enough to hear him. “There goes Florida.”

***

When he finally left the Watertown Hospital to go home and tell Pearl, Junior decided to stop weeping, as his father had only recently requested. He stood outside by the black Oldsmobile that said IVY FUNERAL HOME, PORTLAND, MAINE on its door, another of Marvin Sr.'s innovative ideas. “Marvin Ivy Sr. and Son” the letters told anyone interested, and then listed the phone number. The son stood next to his father's business car, which Ben Cushman had been kind enough to have delivered to the hospital, and wiped tears from his eyes. Spring had convinced everyone once more that she had arrived, and this time she had indeed. Junior could hear all Watertown welcoming her home. People in such wintry climes are more forgiving of nature than they are of their neighbors. This tenet enables them to survive the briefness of summer, the sadness of autumn, the longevity of winter, and then the sluttishness of spring. Junior could hear children caroling summer tunes from bicycles, and the high whine of road equipment above the monotones of construction workers. The bells of an ice cream truck, on its maiden voyage of 1969, rang out like shimmering church bells in the distance, then disappeared. Across the street from the hospital's parking lot, people loaded bulging, ripping sacks of groceries into the backseats of their cars. Food. Sustenance for the body. Life was going on, yet Junior felt apart from it, an outsider, a spy on all the participants.

“My father is dead,” Junior murmured dreamily, but no one noticed, so he sped out of the hospital's parking lot, squinting the spring sunshine from his puffy eyes.

***

Roy Vachon pointed to a door and Junior went through it to stand in front of Randy Ivy's cell.

“Finally,” Randy said, and reached for his jacket on the narrow cot. “I thought I was going to rot in Mayberry.”

Junior eyed his son steadily, a look he remembered well from his own father.

“I told them you were my old man,” said Randy. “But they wouldn't let me go.”

“Why should they?” asked Junior. “You're a goddamn car thief.”

“Oh, come on, man,” said Randy. “I've had a real rough night here. Don't start in on me.”

“You listen to me,” Junior snarled. With a flash of his hand he reached through the bars and grabbed Randy's shirt collar, yanked him forward. Junior looked into his son's pupils, the eyes of Marvin Randall Ivy III, the namesake, the recipient, the inheritor of genetic coding, of human notions, of the Ivy Funeral Home, of the late Marvin Ivy Sr.

“Don't you ever call me
man
again,” Junior said to his startled offspring. “Now I'm gonna tell you something and you'd better listen.” He released Randy's shirt and the boy dropped down to his cot and put his face in his hands.

“You'd better get your horse manure rounded up into a meaningful pile pretty soon,” Marvin Ivy Jr. told his son. “You'd better get your dog doo-doo all in the same bag, because I've had it with you. You understand me?”

“This isn't fair,” Randy pleaded.

“And don't
yammer
!” Junior shouted.

Roy Vachon ducked in to investigate the disturbances.

“Well?” he asked Junior.

“I've never seen him before,” Junior said evenly. “He must be a Gifford.”

“Dad!” Randy shouted, and grabbed the bars of his cell.

“So now it's Dad, is it?” Junior thought, and left the room. Outside he looked at Sheriff Roy Vachon. He wouldn't bother to report the vandalism on the Cadillac. He had visited Mattagash enough to have learned one of the local truisms: like elves, the Giffords have no fingerprints. But instead of chalking it up as a loss, Junior would consider it just another expensive lesson. Besides, he had suffered a much greater loss than the Caddy. He had lost the Senior in his life, his immediate ancestor, and if he wasn't careful, he would remain floating. Even his name, even Junior, was now a name in limbo, with nothing to attach itself to.

“That
is
my son,” Junior told the sheriff. “If you don't mind keeping him a little longer, I think it might be a valuable piece of education for him.”

“No problem,” Roy Vachon said, and winked. “Nice thing about us. We don't charge any tuition.”

“Well, first of all, Frederick went to the hospital and proposed to Natasha, right after she told Maximilian she was up the stump. Then the doctors took a fibroid tumor the size of a basketball out of her, so she ain't knocked up after all and won't have to marry that sleazebag little fairy. But Tiffany ain't gonna be able to adopt the baby 'cause now there is none and, if you'll remember, she's so barren she couldn't have a
kitten.
But if you ask me, when Roberto gits back from that business trip to Mexico, he's gonna put the goddamn boots to the whole miserable bunch of 'em.”

—Vinal Gifford, regarding the soap opera episode that Pike missed due to a court appearance

Pearl McKinnon Ivy insisted that Cushman's Funeral Home handle the details of Marvin Ivy Sr., a business decision Marvin would have agreed with, unbeknownst to Pearl. Junior didn't argue with her. Major decision making was still new to him. He would have to try out a few of his own, in privacy, before he sprang any on his mother.

“I'm staying on in Mattagash,” Pearl said to her son. “I want him up here. I want him close by. He had no friends in Portland anyway. His business was his best friend. Now it's yours. If you're smart, you'll let it be an acquaintance, not a friend. Look to the living for things like that.”

“What about the house?” Junior asked.

“Sell it,” said Pearl.

“But your stuff,” said Junior.

“I took every single thing out of that house I consider valuable,” said Pearl. “You see anything there you want, you go ahead and take it. Then sell the rest.”

“But that was
our
house,” Junior almost whined, then checked himself.

“Yes,” said Pearl. “You're right. It was. First it was mine and Marvin's. Then it was mine and Marvin's and yours. Then you got your own house, and it was just mine and Marvin's again. Now it's just mine. Sell it. This is where I belong.”

***

The next afternoon, Junior had Thelma drop him off at Watertown's bus station in the family business car. Peter Craft was busy at his filling station, rounding up a new battery and four tires for the Cadillac. Junior would have to drive it back to the Cadillac dealer in Portland for the snobby stuff. While he sat waiting for his two daughters to arrive from Portland, Thelma drove over to the police station and managed to get Randy released without getting herself locked up. It was her first day in months without the warm companionship of Valium, a mother's companionship, a loving sister's, an eighth cousin's. Whatever companionship you wanted it to be.

“Lord love a duck, but I'm gonna make it,” Thelma thought. “Your grandfather's dead,” she said to Randy. “Now get in the car.”

“Balls,” said Randy. “And I thought
this
was a bummer.” Mattagash, it seemed, had different effects on different people.

***

“I thought you were coming to a
wedding
,” Cynthia Jane complained, as she and Regina scooted down from the Greyhound.

“You might say even the wedding turned into a funeral,” Junior said, hoping to make light of the situation, hoping to console his daughters on the occasion of their grandfather's death.

“I hate funerals,” Regina said firmly.

“So do I,” said Cynthia Jane, and tugged at the legs of her panty hose, hoisted them down a bit.

“Your grandfather couldn't help it,” Junior reminded his girls.

“Well,” said Cynthia Jane, “it seems senseless to come all this way to a funeral when we have our own place.”
Your
grandfather
has
just
died
, Junior almost said to her, but instead he realized something about his eldest child. He wished that she would marry her thin-faced dental student and get the hell out of his house.

“They're both barbaric rituals anyway,” said Regina, and slipped a book from her carry-on bag. “Weddings and funerals alike. They prey upon the superstitions of the ill-read. Tell me, have you hired any professional mourners for the occasion?”

Junior looked at his second daughter. Now this one, this one with her pale face and inquisitive eyes, might have a chance. This one might just be a modern chip off the old Pearl McKinnon Ivy block.

“One out of three,” thought Junior, as he visualized the futures of his three children. “Thirty-three percent success possibilities. That ain't half bad nowadays.” He realized his father had gone to his grave thinking he had batted zero, had struck out completely with his only child. Maybe that's why large families had been so prevalent in little towns like Mattagash. The failure ratio didn't appear so fatal. Maybe the Catholics were onto something.

***

“People don't wear mourning like they used to,” Sicily mentioned to Pearl, as she eyed the bright pastel colors that adorned Marvin's granddaughters. The gathering at Cushman's Funeral Home was small. Pearl, Sicily, and Amy Joy, representing the old McKinnon clan, sat like mismatched sisters in the front row. Junior and Thelma, with their three children, representing the Portland clan, sat directly behind Pearl. Junior reached a hand out to touch his mother's shoulder occasionally, and watched as she took it gratefully in her own hand, squeezed it, and then let it go. His mother could only lean on someone for so long, Junior noticed, before she straightened herself again. Yet he did not see this as a weakness but as a strength, as her inheritance from the old pioneers.

Winnie Craft had come,
to
pay
her
respects
to
Pearl
and
Sicily
, or so she told Pearl, who inspected her with steely McKinnon eyes. And Claire Fennelson had come along to keep Winnie company, or so she told Sicily. Dorrie Fennelson had come along only to drive the two women, or so she told Amy Joy. They sat stiffly, dressed in black getups, staring straight ahead, seemingly uninterested in everyone and everything but the pure grief of the beleaguered family. To a passerby, to a tourist, to a canoe or white-water enthusiast, they might appear to be sincerely paying their respects to the deceased. But Pearl McKinnon Ivy knew better. She knew the truth. The living interested these woman far more than the dead. Like irritating houseflies, Pearl knew, these women had eyes all over their heads.

With Pearl's consent, Marvin Ivy Jr. stood to say a few words.

“We don't need a preacher,” Pearl had reminded her son. “Your father was never a man of the church. There's no need for us to pretend now.” Sicily had done that with Ed, Pearl remembered, and everyone knew that Ed Lawler was an atheist.

“Let Mattagash do things their way,” Pearl decided. “I'm home, but I'm my own woman.”

So Junior stood, with eyes tearing but without any yammering, and spoke a short eulogy in his father's memory.

“He was a good father,” Junior said, and looked at Randy, his own son. “I wish I'd let him know that more often when I had the chance.”

Claire Fennelson elbowed Winnie. This was something to feed into the Mattagash Intelligence Network, a little tidbit to make it purr and hum.

“He was a good husband,” Junior said, and looked at his mother, who sniffed softly as Sicily reached for her hand. “Being a workaholic was his only vice, if it can be called that.”

Winnie stiffened. Had he said alcoholic? It was some kind of “holic.” Maybe Claire had heard. She must inquire on the frost heaved ride back to Mattagash. Beside her, Claire Fennelson had indeed heard. Marvin Ivy, Pearl McKinnon's husband, had been an alcoholic!

Sicily felt uncomfortable, her black suit about to squeeze her out of it. Ed had been an alcoholic. Did Junior's use of the word
workaholic
, a city word, a word that would never wing its way north for there was no need of it, did it remind everyone of Sicily's own husband? Were they all feeling sorry for her right now?

Amy Joy sat in a black skirt, a white blouse covered with a black sweater, black pumps, and thought about how Dorrie Fennelson had driven all the way to Watertown, to the funeral of a man she'd never met, so that she could flaunt her married self in Amy Joy's face. Amy Joy was surprised she hadn't brought that noisy baby.

“Workaholic. Alcoholic. Cath-o-holic,” Amy Joy thought. “They're one and the same. They all mean too much of what could have been a good thing.”

***

The Cushman hearse pulled slowly out of the funeral home drive and pointed its nose toward Mattagash. In the car immediately following, Sicily and Pearl, large McKinnon women, sat in the front seat next to the furnished driver. Junior claimed half of the backseat for himself, while Thelma and Amy Joy shared the meager space that was left them.

Cynthia Jane drove the family car, Regina on the passenger side, Randy scowling in the backseat. When would the nightmare of Mattagash end?

The fourth and last car carried the good wives of Mattagash, happy to find themselves behind all the rest, where they could survey the events at their leisure.

“Pearl didn't look like she'd been crying,” said Claire.

“Well,” said Winnie. “I suppose she'll come into a good sum of money with him gone.”

“Crying don't mean nothing,” Dorrie said, dodging a pothole. “Look at how much Jackie Kennedy didn't cry.”

“Even her kids didn't cry,” said Claire. “Poor darlings. Saluting their hearts out.”

“Only John-John saluted,” said Dorrie.

“Dear, dear children,” said Winnie, “to go through something like that. But I suppose they all come into some money afterward.”

“They ought to mark that pothole,” said Dorrie, thinking how helpful the sticks driven into the ground along the sides of the road, and displaying a red warning flag, could be when one was miles from home and somewhat unfamiliar with the topography.

“Warm weather will take care of the frost heaves soon enough,” said Claire. “But I don't think the state of Maine will ever fix them potholes.”

“Did you see how the granddaughters dressed?” Winnie asked. “You'd swear they were going to a prom.”

***

“I'm so embarrassed to be driving this car with that writing on the door,” Cynthia Jane complained. “We look like a funeral convention.”

“I've read they have the rowdiest in the country,” said Regina, and pulled her visor down to break the spring sunshine.

“You can't even imagine what this has been like,” Randy told his sisters. He sat forward and folded his arms on the back of their seat.

“Oh, I can imagine all right,” Cynthia Jane said, then “Holy hell!” as she hit a pothole. The car jarred out of it and straightened again.

“Wait till you hit what they call a frost heave,” warned Randy.

“Did you see how Amy Joy was dressed?” Cynthia Jane laughed. “Did she look like a spinster or what?”

“Barbaric,” said Regina, and turned her face to watch the thirty miles of bright blue river unfold as the road followed it, not realizing it had been her great-great-great-grandfather's passageway to Mattagash.

***

Vinal and Pike Gifford had just left Henri Nadeau's, where they purchased hot dogs and beer with some fresh money that had suddenly fallen into their palms, when the funeral procession wound past.

“We oughtta splurge and get the Plymouth an eight-track,” Pike said to Vinal, as they fell in behind Dorrie Fennelson's car and joined the mourners. “I kinda miss Julie Andrews.”

“We can always buy that eight-track back,” Vinal advised. “Old Sam would probably sell it back to us for the same price. We're good customers.”

It was true that the Giffords kept Old Sam's little junk shop, on the Mattagash–St. Leonard line, full to the rafters with sundries. Old Sam asked no questions, which was good business conduct as far as Vinal and Pike were concerned. They offered no answers, anyway.

“I wasn't talking of
buying
one,” Pike said. “There must be somebody else in northern Maine with one of them things.”

“I wouldn't mind taking that hearse for a spin,” Vinal said, leaning over for a quick view past the other autos in front of him.

“You'll be doing that sooner or later anyway,” said Pike, and felt one of Henri Nadeaus hot dogs rise dramatically up his esophagus. He burped a long belch, mixed with beer.

The funeral procession had finally reached the WELCOME TO MATTAGASH sign. Giffordtown wasn't too far away now, but Vinal's heavy foot had grown restless with the censorship placed on it all the way from Henri Nadeau's Quick Lunch and Gas to the Mattagash line.

“Hey,” he said to Pike, “let's moon 'em.” He pulled out into the passing lane and pushed the accelerator to the floor. Pike unwound his side window and tossed an empty Bud bottle at the Mattagash sign. It hit wood with a thick thump.

“Five hundred and thirty-eight!” Pike shouted. “It ain't likely you'll break that record, Vine. You can't aim as good as me.”

“You're just guessing,” said Vinal.

“No, I swear,” vowed Pike, and held up his right hand. “I started counting in 1957.”

“There's old Winnie-the-Pooh,” said Vinal, and slowed the Plymouth. “Show her the moon, Pike!”

The Plymouth lunged forward, riding the crest of the frost heaves as though they were magnificent waves. When it came abreast of Dorrie Fennelson's car, it floated alongside. Dorrie was too frightened to take her eyes from the road, but Claire and Winnie were gaping at the shark and its occupants.

“Hurry up!” shouted Vinal. “I'm bound to meet something head-on.”

Pike dropped his pants and then maneuvered his bare ass up into the passenger window.

“Kiss that, Winnie!” Vinal yelled. Dorrie quickly closed her side glass, as Winnie turned white and Claire Fennelson screamed and covered her eyes.