All the Single Ladies: A Novel (3 page)

Later on, in the evening after a dinner of salad in a bag and half of a cold pork chop, I called my daughter. She didn’t take the call. I thought about that for a moment and it made me feel worse. I didn’t leave a message because she would know from caller ID that it was me who had called. Then I called my mother. It was either sit on the old sofa and watch
Law & Order: SVU
until I couldn’t stand it anymore, do sun salutations to relax my body, or call my mother. I sort of needed my mom and some sympathy.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom. You busy?”

“Never too busy for my darling daughter! What’s going on?” She put her hand over the receiver and called out. “Alan? For heaven’s sake! Turn that thing down!”

“All right!
All right!”

My father yelled from the background and I could see him in my mind’s eye: pushed back in his leather recliner, fumbling with the remote to his sixty-­inch television that had its own pocket in the chair opposite the cup holder that held his beer and yet another pocket for his reading glasses and the latest issue of
TV Guide
.

“I just wanted to talk for a minute. I had sort of a rough day.”

“What happened? Gosh, it was nice to see you last weekend.”

“You too. Well, we have this really sweet patient at Palmetto House who’s got terrible cancer and it’s like almost the end, you know?”

“Loss has always been hard for you to handle.”

“Well, Mom, death is hard for most ­people to deal with.”

“You spend too much time dwelling on the negative. Why don’t you join a book club? Or an online dating thing? My book club is coming here this Thursday night. What should I serve them?”

“Oh, just go to Costco and buy a brick of cheese and a box of crackers. And I can’t join book clubs and dating sites because that stuff costs money. You know that.”

“Well, then, do the free things. Go for a walk! Take a book out of the library! Get interesting! Go back to teaching yoga, but in someone else’s studio!”

“Mom! Stop!”

“I’ll tell you, ever since Marianne moved to Denver and you closed your business, you’ve been on a big fat bummer and it’s time for you to snap out of it! All this wallowing—­”

“Mom!”

“I’m just saying that you’ll regret your wallowing when you’re my age. You’ll get up one morning and every bone in your body will be killing you. You still have a lot of living left to do, so don’t waste it!”

“Mom! Stop! I didn’t call you to—­”

“Here! Talk to your father! Alan! Come talk some sense into your daughter!”

“I’m busy! Just tell her I love her and to quit spending money!”

“Your father’s right. Now, how’s Marianne?”

“How would I know? She never calls.”

“See? There you go again! Why can’t you call her?”

If I told her why Marianne and I weren’t speaking she’d have a heart attack. Somehow, I got off the phone, stared at it, and thought, That’s all he ever says. And she’s always telling me what’s wrong with me! Then I had a terrible thought. What if one of my parents died and the surviving one wanted to live with me? Oh! God! No! I sort of said a blasphemous prayer, petitioning the Lord for my mother to go first because I could tolerate my father’s company without every moment feeling like I was having a deep scaling in the dentist’s chair. But my mother was overbearing and loud and frankly not very nice to me. We would kill each other! But living with Dad would be terrible too. First of all, I couldn’t afford to take care of him. Second, having Dad in my house would obliterate any hope of an intimate life. (Yes, I still had hope.) And third, I might be a nurse but being a personal nurse to my father wasn’t something I could easily do. We were both ridiculously modest and those personal moments of his hygienic routine would be so awkward. On top of it all, he was so set in his ways. He wouldn’t be very happy if the refrigerator wasn’t arranged by size and category or the spice drawer wasn’t alphabetized. Worse, my stupid brother, Alan Jr., and his horrible wife, Janet, would want no part of my parents’ care but they’d want quarterly expense reports on how this arrangement was affecting their inheritance. Oh Lord, please be merciful. Take Carol and Alan St. Clair home to heaven at the very same moment while they sleep.

On that night life seemed dreary, but when the sun came up in the morning, I was filled with irrational happiness. And it proved to be irrational. When I got to Palmetto House I found Suzanne and Carrie with Kathy as she took her final breaths. I cried with them. I couldn’t help it. I’d had no idea she would die so soon.

“Listen,” I said, as soon as I could speak without the fear of sobbing, “I can help if you’d like, with phone calls or arrangements. Just tell me how I can help.”

My words hung in the air for a few minutes until the reality began to sink into Suzanne and Carrie’s minds.

“There’s no next of kin,” Carrie said. “Isn’t that terrible?”

“She wanted to be cremated and she wanted a Mass to be said,” Suzanne said.

“And she didn’t want flowers. She worked at a florist but she didn’t want flowers,” Carrie said. “No flowers at her own funeral. Oh God.”

“But she wanted donations to go to a hospice of your own choosing. I’m sending flowers anyway. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t,” Suzanne said, and collapsed in a chair. Then she sighed so hard that she looked ten years older. “How am I going to handle this?”

I said, “Don’t worry. I will help you. We do this kind of thing here all the time.”

Chapter 2

A Curious Requiem

THE
POST & COURIER
—­OBITUARIES

K
ATHRYN
G
ORDON
H
ARPER

Born August 30, 1956; died on June 10, 2014, after a long battle with cancer. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Harper adopted Charleston, South Carolina, as her home nearly twenty years ago after having spent many years in Minneapolis. Kathy, as she was known to her many friends, was a devoted volunteer of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League. She was an avid history buff, a longtime volunteer for the South Carolina Historical Society in membership and the editor of their newsletter. For the past few years she was employed by the SGW Floral Design Team in Mount Pleasant. She held a master’s degree in art history from the University of Georgia and a black belt in karate, and had a special interest in snuff bottles. She will be missed by all who knew her. Friends are invited to attend a Mass in her honor at the Church of Christ Our King in Mount Pleasant on Friday the twentieth of June at ten o’clock in the morning. In lieu of flowers please send donations to a hospice of your own choosing.

When I arrived at the church I was disappointed by the scant showing of cars. I had been hoping that Kathy had friends I’d never met, scores of ­people I hadn’t seen visit her at Palmetto House who would come out of the woodwork to mourn her passing. In some ways the light showing was a reflection of my worries about my own demise. I mean, didn’t we all wonder from time to time who would come to our funeral? Who would stop their day, cancel appointments, put on the appropriate clothes, get in a car, and drive to our funeral ser­vice? Who did we know who would stand or sit or kneel in a pew, hopefully recite a prayer for us, reflect on the life we had lived, and remember something good and worthy about us, some kindness we had shown them?

It was true what ­people said about life being too short and time going quickly. One lifetime was never enough to do all the things any person wanted to do. I was still trying to figure out what Kathy Harper could possibly have done to deserve this lousy karma. Nothing, as far as I knew. Nothing at all. There was just no logical reason.

I opened the door to the church and stepped inside. There were fewer than twenty ­people there, spread among the pews. Two baskets of gorgeous exotic flowers flanked the altar. They had to have been from Suzanne. The organist was playing something lovely that was probably Vivaldi or Bach. I never knew the difference, only that I liked both of them. Whatever the music was, it wasn’t too maudlin or too liturgical. Kathy would not have wanted anyone to be maudlin, and though I was less sure about her feelings on religion, the music seemed appropriately dignified for the occasion.

I spotted Suzanne and Carrie, recognizing them by the backs of their heads. Carrie was a tall, striking blonde and Suzanne, in contrast, was a beautiful, tiny sprite with long, shiny dark brown hair. They turned when they heard the echo of the closing door and motioned to me to come and sit with them. As soon as I sat down in the pew next to Carrie, Suzanne leaned over her to whisper to me.

“See that guy playing the organ?”

I looked around over my shoulder in perfect synchronization with Carrie and Suzanne. We must’ve looked like the Snoop Sisters.

“He used to date Kathy.”

“Really?” I said.

“He was crazy about her,” Carrie said.

“And she was crazy about him,” Suzanne said. “He’s a tree hugger.”

I looked at him and thought he seemed like a nice enough guy. His blond hair was sort of long in the front and I liked his shirt. What was the matter with being a tree hugger?

“What’s his name?” I said.

“Paul something—­sounds like Glider,” Suzanne said.

The ser­vice began then with the priest appearing on the altar preceded by an altar server who lit some candles. A large man in a dark suit, presumably from the funeral home, slowly and with great solemnity pushed a rolling cart, a tiny bier, up the aisle to the front of the church. On it stood a box covered in a beautiful lace-­trimmed cloth and a single ivory-­colored candle pressed into a heavy brass candlestick. In that box were the ashes of Kathryn Gordon Harper. The altar server came down from the raised altar and lit the candle. The gentleman from the funeral home turned quietly and walked back down the aisle, taking a seat in the rear of the church.

Suzanne, Carrie, and I looked at each other with startled expressions, each of us on the verge of tears with a similar question on our minds. How, exactly
how,
did Kathy’s entire life fit into that tiny little box? Just then, as though he wanted to divert our attention, Paul the tree-­hugger organist began playing “My Favorite Things” for a moment or two and then broke into a wild and rollicking rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” You would have thought we were in the French Quarter of New Orleans at a Cajun funeral. I felt a sudden piercing urge to get up and dance in the aisle. It wasn’t until we were all smiling, and the priest had cleared his throat loudly several times and made some terrible faces and hand gestures indicating his displeasure, that Paul let the music die out. And he didn’t stop playing all at once. He slowed down, dropped his left hand, slowly played a few notes with his right hand, and then let the final notes fade away entirely, without finishing the verse.

Clearly, Paul the tree-­hugging organist was insulted. We could hear his shoes click across the floor. He took a seat in the pew right behind us.

“I was ready to join in,” Suzanne said.

“Me too,” I said, and looked at Carrie, who bobbed her head in agreement.

Paul leaned forward and whispered to us. Loudly.

“She loved that music,” he said. “That priest is a stuffy old man.”

Suzanne turned around and said to him, “You’re right.”

Then, sensing that wasn’t enough to repair his embarrassment, Carrie turned and said, “Kathy would’ve loved your selections.”

I turned to see him blush and smile and it appeared that the sting had been soothed. But in my peripheral vision I saw Suzanne roll her eyes, which seemed a little snide. I didn’t know if I agreed with her position or not. Suzanne didn’t suffer fools well and this Paul fellow was obviously a sensitive man. I didn’t have to agree with Carrie and Suzanne on everything to be on good terms with them. Being a medical professional and one who had spent a great deal of time seeing to Kathryn’s comfort gave me a space where I could hold my own opinions. Personally? In my experience, sensitive men were an unusual and beautiful thing. Unfortunately, they often played for the other team.

I felt a little bad for Paul. He was obviously affected by the death of Kathy. I wondered how close they had been. Had they been lovers? Whatever relationship they had known with each other must’ve ended some time ago because I could not recall ever seeing him at Palmetto House. But that didn’t mean their relationship had been insignificant. Maybe he had thought they might reunite? Maybe he had thought there was time? Maybe he had never even known she was so ill? Or ill at all?

The priest was circling Kathryn’s ashes and sprinkling holy water all over the place. It was an interesting ser­vice, filled with all the smells, bells, and drama that you always hear go on in the Catholic Church. I wondered if I should go to Communion for Kathy’s sake, but then the priest made a small speech about who was welcome at the Communion rail and who was not. I was a “was-­not.” So were Carrie and Suzanne. In fact, the only people who went to Communion were Paul and a prim older woman who Suzanne said worked with them at her florist.

Suzanne leaned over toward me again.

She said, “He’s a convert.”

“Converts are the worst,” Carrie said. “He used to be Jewish. But clearly not terribly devout.”

Soon we were reciting the Lord’s Prayer and being told to “go in peace.” Kathryn Gordon Harper’s Requiem Mass was officially ended. It was the strangest moment. I felt a chill travel from the bottom of my spine to the top of my head, and despite the heat, I shuddered. Not only was Kathy gone from the world but I realized then that I might never see Carrie and Suzanne again. I know that remark probably seems ridiculous. After all, they were Kathy’s friends and I was merely one of the many ­people who saw about her care. But I knew I’d miss them.

Inside of an hour I had gone from a strong, independent, seasoned nurse to an insecure woman whose insides jiggled a bit over the thought of not having these two women for friends. Was I being pathetic or merely human?

The priest came down from the altar and removed the linen cloth that covered the tiny box which held Kathy’s ashes. He folded it carefully so that it would not have to be reironed for the next ceremony and handed it to the altar boy, who turned and left. Then he spoke.

“To whom shall I entrust Kathryn Harper’s remains?”

“To me,” Suzanne said, and stepped forward. “I’m Suzanne Williams. Her friend and her employer. But mostly her friend.”

“My condolences,” he said disingenuously, and handed her the horrible box. He then turned on his heel with all the officiousness of a visiting bishop or perhaps a cardinal and simply walked away.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He probably sang it in the shower.

Suzanne just stood there with the box in her hands, looking at it.

“How terrible,” she said.

“What?” I said, silently agreeing with her.

“Well, there was no wake, no reception, no nothing at all for our friend,” Suzanne said. “Just this Mass with this cranky priest, and oh, I don’t know, it just seems like . . .”

“She deserved more?” Carrie said.

“It’s just over too quick,” Suzanne said. “Everything, this ser­vice, her life . . . God. How awful.”

“I know what. Why don’t we go out for brunch?” I said, thinking I was ripe for an episode of purely emotional eating.

“I could go for pancakes big-­time,” Carrie said. “Or waffles. Well, just one.”

“I could go for pancakes anytime,” I said, but I did count carbs.

“Or an omelet,” Suzanne said. “Maybe a mimosa or . . .”

We were walking outside and we paused near the door of the church to see an older woman approaching us. She was very chic and could possibly have been wearing vintage Courrèges or Givenchy, which was odd for Charleston, in the middle of the day, in the broiling weather. She didn’t have a drop of perspiration on her and we were practically dripping. When she removed her oversized sunglasses I gasped, wondering how many times she’d had an eyelift. Then there was the alarming matter of her chin and neck to be considered.

“Excuse me,” she said to Suzanne. “Are you part of Kathy’s family?”

“No,” Suzanne said.

“Oh. Well, did she have any family?”

“No. She was an only child. Her parents died years ago,” Suzanne said. “No siblings.”

“Who are you?” Carrie asked. She seemed uncomfortable and she whispered to me, “Who knows? These days?”

I nodded in agreement because sometimes suspicious ­people did turn up in the strangest places.

“I’m her landlady. Wendy Murray. I have to dispose of her earthly treasures. Will you ladies be helping me to do that?”

Suzanne and Carrie exchanged looks and said, “Sure, I guess. Of course.”

“She left everything to me,” Suzanne said.

This was news. I had wondered about Kathy’s estate.

“What got her?” Wendy asked.

“Cancer,” Carrie said. “She sure fought it.”

“She was incredibly brave,” Suzanne said. “And she never complained. Not one word.”

“Humph, I knew there was something fishy going on. At first I thought she went on a long vacation, like a Carnival Cruise. She was always getting brochures from them in the mail. And then I had to read her obituary in the paper,” Wendy said. “Sometimes I think the whole world has cancer.”

“Seems like it, doesn’t it?” Carrie said.

“We see so much of it,” I said.

“Who’s we?” Wendy asked.

Boy, I thought, this is one salty little old lady.

“I’m Lisa St. Clair. And I was one of her nurses at Palmetto House.”

“What in the heck was she doing there?” Wendy said, and shook her bangle bracelets. “I thought cancer patients went to hospice.”

Carrie cringed.

“She
was
in hospice,” I said. “We have some hospice beds.”

“Palmetto House, huh? That’s where I want to go when my time comes! That’s a swinging place,” Wendy said with a wicked grin that stretched across her stretched face.

I figured she had to be seventy or maybe even eighty if she was a day. Well, I thought, she’d better hurry up and book a room if she wants to be part of the Palmetto House action. How long did she expect to live?

“After happy hour it can get pretty crazy.” And, you’d better bring an antibiotic for STDs if you know what’s good for you, I also thought but did not say. Party on, babe.

“So I hear,” Wendy said, still grinning, and began digging in her purse, pulling out a pen and tearing the back from an envelope. She leaned on a car, scribbled her address and phone number, and handed the paper to Suzanne. “It’s already the twentieth of the month. If you could get her stuff this week it would be great.”

“I’ll try,” Suzanne said.

“I have to paint and try to rent the place out by the first,” Wendy said. “Life goes on, you know?”

Wendy Murray turned on her kitten heel and proceeded to cross the parking lot to her car without so much as a “Gee, it was nice to meet you ladies” or “Wasn’t Kathy such a sweet lady?” or even a “What a shame!”

We stood there together watching her get into her car and I think it’s safe to say there was a collective feeling that we’d been on the receiving end of some very unsouthern and unladylike behavior.

“Here I am with my dear friend’s ashes in my arms, practically warm, mind you, and her landlady wants me to hustle and get her belongings so she can rerent the apartment. What is this? New York?”

Carrie said, “Pretty cold, if you ask me.”

“Terrible,” I said. “I’m starving.”

“Ravenous,” Suzanne said. “Let’s go to Page’s.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Can’t get there fast enough.” I gave them a little wave and walked toward my car. There was no point in belaboring our departure given the heat.