Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (26 page)

Six hours later when Balinda gets off the bus and takes a taxi straight to the care center where her mother is resting against a stack of pillows that have been strategically placed to help support her bad back, she stands in the doorway and places her hands across her mouth to suppress an emotional cry. It is a cry of love. She wants to run and throw herself on the bed and ask her mother to forgive her for every harsh and horrible thing she has ever said or thought. She wants to hold her mother in her arms like a baby and promise her—again—that she will take care of her until the day she dies. She wants to sing her mother a song in Polish and vow to her that she will take her home.

Balinda does sing and she does promise and when her mother wakes up two hours later and sees her there she reaches for her hand, grabs her wrists and pulls her right onto the bed and for the very first time in her life says, “Come here, my baby,” to her daughter in
English,
and the two women huddle together as the storm floats to a halt, tired as hell, just the other side of downtown Chicago.

By ten
P.M.
Laura, Rebecca, Marie, Katherine and Jill have been at the airport for 12.3 hours and it is beyond obvious that there is no way in hell they are going to get to Seattle that day or maybe even the next day. The airport is still loaded with people who have now tired of drinking beer, playing cards and being happy about the odd sensation that comes with uncharted free time and being frivolous with what you share with total strangers, and they have descended into a grumpy aisle of tiredness that has many of them sleeping in places that make the entire terminal look like a war zone.

Marie has long since given up hope of watching the sun rise over the ocean islands. In her world of in-your-face reality, she has decided to make the most of the moment and throw down her cards first.

“Well, ladies,” she says. “Apparently we are going to have to come up with Plan B for this segment of the traveling funeral. What say ye?”

“We don’t know what to say,” Jill tells her. “We stink, we’re full of cheap-ass bagels and light beers and we’ve stumbled into that dangerous place of exhaustion called ‘Who the hell cares?’ ”

“I see,” Marie responds, standing with both her hands on her hips. “I’m a helper. So now I am going to help you by sending bold Katherine over to that desk, where she will ask for a room, travel vouchers and anything else she can get out of the almost bankrupt airlines people.”

Katherine is all set to be a hard-ass attorney but when she gets to the front of the desk, thirty minutes later, and sees the haggard attendant, stacks of paperwork, piles of coffee cups, and the line of furious people behind her, she cannot do it.

“People don’t realize we can’t control the weather,” the attendant confides as she stamps out a voucher for a room at the Sheraton. “I appreciate you being nice. I’ve got to get a new job.”

Katherine laughs, finds out that they will be booked on the first morning flight to Seattle, unless the storm changes its ugly mind and wakes back up, and—because she’s been so nice—they each—even Balinda—will get a round-trip ticket anywhere in the United States as a thank-you for not being jackasses.

“Whoa . . .” Katherine says, giving the woman a high-five. “Anywhere?”

The woman motions for Katherine to lean into the desk. She whispers to Katherine that not many people realize that for just a few hundred dollars the tickets she is handing them can be changed for use in international travel—round-trip.

“You are kidding?”

The woman smiles and says no, she is not kidding.

“Could we fly into Poland?”

“You’d have to go to Germany and then take some little bump ride over there but yes, you could work it out.”

Katherine hugs her so tightly the woman winces and then points to her shoes and asks if she was with the group holding the traveling funeral. “We were and are,” Katherine shares. “It ain’t over yet.”

“What a fabulous idea,” the woman says. “You all really helped a mess of people today. The entire airport is talking about traveling funerals. Here, honey,” she adds, pushing dinner coupons toward her. “Take your friend in the shoebox out for one last fling on me.”

They do.

The looming end of the traveling funeral turns each one of them into manic mamas. They check into the hotel, take ten-minute showers, put their same clothes back on, brush off their red tennies, then head downstairs to the pub and dining room where they clear the center of the table, make room for Annie, and order appetizers, shrimp, steaks, salads with names they can barely pronounce and several bottles of the wines that they have been dying to try for the past five years.

The bar and restaurant managers decide to stay open an extra two hours, not only because the hotel is suddenly full and people are still ordering main courses at midnight, but also because a mysterious man—also stranded in the storm—has given them his Visa card, pointed at the group of red-shoed women who have placed a shoebox in the center of the table, and said, “Make sure they have whatever they want for dinner, for breakfast, in their rooms . . . anything.”

Anything.

The night flies into its dark self then and the storm flows into a small circle until it retires and lets the world get back on course. The women toast and eat and drink. They sing at the bar and buy other stranded men and women drinks. They tell stories to these strangers about Annie and who she was and what she did and then later, so much later that it is already getting light outside, they stagger back to their rooms to find flowers on the bed, boxes of candy, bottles of champagne, and an absolutely beautiful note from the man.

The man.

You do not know me but in this absolutely brilliant world that was once inhabited and changed by Annie G. Freeman something happened to me that changed the direction of my life. My son was despondent and on the verge of committing suicide when he was in high school, and Annie’s work, her writing and her program saved my son’s life and mine also. I never met Annie, but I find it utterly fascinating that I was at the airport today and you were at the airport today. Annie would have loved this, I am certain of it, and even though I did not know her I know her through the vibrant force I felt coming from your friendship and love for her. Thank you, Annie, and thank all of you. I was in Minneapolis because my son graduated from his master’s program this week and is now full of the same pieces of life that Annie passed on to so many people. I salute you as I salute her every single day of my life.

There was no name on the note, just the fine scent of generosity and thankfulness that carried each of them into her bed for three hours of sleep and an exhaustive discussion about believing in the magic of life, the power of hope, the cosmic sanity of chance and change, and the unmistakable power of love.

28

There is absolutely no ending Annie Freeman’s traveling funeral quietly, with moderate grace, with anything but the wild gusto and the enormous attitude that Annie brought to almost every moment of her own life.

This is what the five surviving pallbearers discover when they awaken to a full slate of room service, morning massages from the hotel spa compliments of “the man,” a fast and complete cleaning of their only set of clothes while they lounge in thick terry bathrobes, and a message from the airline saying they have been upgraded to first-class for the flight to San Francisco.

San Francisco and not Seattle because they have decided that Washington and those luscious islands off its coast need more than a twenty-second spreading of ashes from a taxi that is moving at the speed of sound.

San Francisco because by the time they arrived in Seattle they would have but a handful of hours to fulfill the desires of Annie. San Francisco because Marie deserves more than twenty minutes. San Francisco because it is time, because if they go to one more airport and create one more traveling funeral mess that seems to attract crowds from nowhere, they may all end up in a penal institution and Annie might not like that—heavy emphasis on the word
might
.

The San Francisco decision is hours behind them and leaves nothing but four hours of total debauchery, including facial treatments, breakfast pastries that have been baked with so much butter they can barely stay on the plates, Bloody Marys, coffee that smells as if it was just brewed in Costa Rica, and a wish that “the man” was there so they could each kiss him.

“Just when you think the entire male race is full of wild farm animals, go figure,” Rebecca says as she sits with her feet up reading the morning newspaper and sipping coffee that makes her push out of her chair and grin each time she takes a sip.

“Look at the fascinating turn this entire funeral has taken because of one lousy storm,” Jill points out.

“It wasn’t like a tiny little storm,” Marie interjects. “Look at this.”

She holds up the front page of
USA Today
and shows them photos of flooded streets, people peering out of homes without power, and airplanes lined up for blocks and blocks at the Chicago airport.

“It was a pisser,” Marie reports. “One of those once-in-every-twenty-five-years kind of storms. You know, I think we should find that pilot who got us here from Duluth. We could have been killed.”

Jill and Laura stare at her as if she has just told them something unimaginable. Katherine, who at the very moment is getting a massage that has made her weep with pleasure, would agree. They are absolutely certain of it.

“Look,” Laura suggests. “If anyone could control the universe it would be Annie. Maybe she planned this whole thing. Maybe she sent this man up here and created the storm and had us all placed in perfect alignment so that all these funky things would happen to us.”

“Maybe not,” Jill says, laughing. “That’s not her style. You know that. But really, if you think about it, that’s exactly what she did.”

“What do you mean?” Laura asks.

“Well, what she did and who she was created a kind of funky motion that sparked a whirlwind. It’s like people changed because they knew her or because she touched their lives in a certain way.”

“She wouldn’t see it that way at all,” Laura says, kicking off her white slippers and swinging her legs off the chair. “She’d say that she just did what she did and people changed
themselves
.”

“I think it was both,” Jill answers her back. “They might not have been moved to change unless they had met her, so it’s kind of a Catch-22. Were they changing anyway? Would they have moved in a new direction? Fell in love? Driven to the airport in a storm? You know. It’s kind of a little bit of both.”

“You’re probably right. And she’d also say, ‘What the hell difference does it make?’ ”

The four of them laugh and decide that whatever any of them thinks about who she was or what happened or why people do what they do is just absolutely fine and dandy as long as they have a good time, do it with a kind heart, and pay homage in a respectful way to the goddesses that have gone before them.

That’s when Katherine flings open the door, puts her hand on her forehead, moans as if she has just risen out of a bed of extreme sexual pleasure, and declares, “Take me. Take me now. Nothing else will ever be the same.”

“See,” Jill says, pointing toward Katherine who has obviously had an experience that is a combination of fun and total pleasure. “Fun at all costs. That’s what she would have said.”

“What
she
is the center of our world?” Katherine asks.

“The Anniemeister. Who else?” Marie responds. “We’ve been having a fascinating discussion about the power of Annie. The cosmic relevance of everything that has happened and continues to happen. The power of death. The enlightenment we can harvest from grieving. You know, just a typical morning discussion on what might just be the last day of a terribly marvelous traveling funeral.”

Katherine sits because her legs are suddenly made of rubber, orders Rebecca to the massage room, then throws herself on the long couch as if she is the queen of the world.

She tells them what she knows is that Annie struggled just like the rest of the world. She tells them that Annie reached some kind of interesting magical moment in her world or a combination of moments—moments in California, Chicago, New Mexico, Florida, New York, Minnesota, and Washington—that helped her tone and define her own life process, who she was, who she became.

“I won’t deny that she had a terribly powerful presence and that I loved her beyond what some people would consider normal for a relationship that does not cross into something physical. But when I pull it all away, when I get down to the bones of who she was and what she gave us, it’s all very simple,” Katherine explains.

No one says anything. The women, including Rebecca who has not yet left the room, snuggle into their chairs as if they are listening to a bedtime story.

“Annie had her stuff,” Katherine goes on. “She had the suicide thing, the depression, the stalking, the loss of her first great love, raising kids alone—by choice—but nonetheless we know that was no easy chore,” Katherine explains, drawing from the mental notes she has managed to keep filed during the past week. “She was occasionally a pain in the ass too.”

This stops the conversation. They laugh and then each one of them launches into an Annie story that makes Annie normal and honest and puts the skin back on her bones and makes her
real
. So very fucking
real
.

They get into it in a big way. She has to be real to them, always and forever real to them, even though each one of them knows that she is dead, that the remains of her ashes are sitting right in front of them, that they will never be able to touch her hand, lie in her lap, have her call them on the phone in the middle of the night, or walk with her along the beach, listen to her bullshit about the economy and politics, drink endless bottles of wine on a wild women-only weekend.

They know it and they launch into the realness of Annie as if they have just picked up the hotel carpeting and discovered an opening into an undiscovered world where women are always in charge and where men have babies and wash dishes and never make the same amount of money that women do who have the exact same jobs.

“It pissed me off, totally, when she would call and say she was coming over and then she would never show up,” Laura says. “I’d be waiting, and then she’d never come and a week later she’d call and not even remember that she’d called. It drove me out of my mind and I’d always say, ‘That’s it,’ and promise myself I’d never change plans for her again but I never did that either. That was Annie. It was just this thing in her head that took her away and made her stay on her path no matter what.”

Katherine understands. She tells them that because she was Annie’s oldest and longest friend that sometimes she felt taken for granted even though she knows it wasn’t true and that Annie loved her.

“But, you know, there were a few times when I needed her and she would just not be available and it made me sad,” she tells them. “I understood, but it made me really sad and I always wanted to tell her that but then she’d show up a few days later and we’d do something like throw water balloons off the roof with the kids and I’d turn and look at her and think that it was just Annie and here she was and it really didn’t matter.”

Laura said she absolutely went crazy when Annie would obsess about something, like the way the Democrats never quite get it right, and then hang on to that one thought so long it would get moldy. Obsessive, Laura said, Annie was obsessive but that’s what made her so attractive to so many people.

“Sometimes she just would not hear.” Laura moves her hands so fast it would be impossible to follow them with the human eye. “The Democratic thing sticks in my mind because of the last damn Bush election and she’d go on and on for hours about how the Democrats were always like party planners who fucked up the details. They’d get a big band but forget to host the event at a place that had electricity. Annie would not stop and sometimes, well, shit, many times that was so maddening I wanted to strangle her.”

Once, Laura goes on, she did strangle Annie. After a particularly long conversation—totally one-sided—Laura said she reached over, put her hands around Annie’s throat, and very loudly said, “So shut up and do something about it.” She said Annie just looked at her and laughed.

“She laughed and laughed and then I put my hands down and that was the end of it but like a month later she wrote this huge article that was printed on the editorial page of the
San Francisco Examiner
and it was about what we had talked about. Annie did something, but I had to strangle her first. Maybe I should have done it more often. . . .”

Rebecca takes a long sigh, she almost sounds like a horse who has walked through the desert and has finally come out of it and is drinking from a lake, and then she looks from Jill to Laura to Katherine to Marie and asks how much time they have.

“Don’t laugh,” she says, moving forward in her chair as if she is about to shout. “I lived next to her, closer to her than any of you have in a long time, and so many things about her drove me crazy too. My God, do you know that she never, ever once took out her own goddamn garbage?”

They all roar because they, each one of them, has lived with a variety of people and in a variety of places, including each other for the past few days, and they know how often it is one small, tiny, minute thing that pushes a relationship over the edge. Sometimes it is the way someone parks a car, just too close to yours, or the way they make the bed or the ridiculous way they line up cans of soda and water in the refrigerator. Sometimes it’s their favorite hat or the way they always have to buy gas on a Friday night. It’s always just one hellish little thing.

“There were tons of things,” Rebecca says as if someone has finally given her permission to let it all fly. “I had to get her damn dog so many times from the pound I was thinking about running the pup over myself but I loved the poor thing too much.”

Little things.

“Well,” she sighs, “I never let it ruin anything and I always told her she pissed me off with this little shit but it feels pretty damn good right now to just throw it off my skin one more time.”

One more time, they all agree, is good.

Good for keeping them all safe and for making certain that above all, above everything else—above the writing and the workshops and the tragedy that Annie overcame, above the fine boys she raised who turned into men who are disciples for everything their mother taught and showed them and the way she shared her heart and love and life with so many people, above the way she cared mostly how she felt and not what others felt who might try and stop her because she was not doing or being what
they
thought but what she thought and needed, above the way she would have thrown herself in front of a truck or train or car or boat or bus for someone she did not even know let alone love—Annie G. Freeman was human and she had failings and she struggled and she sometimes lost—but, goddamn it—Annie G. Freeman never gave up.

She never gave up except for that last time. The time when no matter what she did or said or how hard she tried the cancer would not leave her alone. And even then, even in her dying, the very human Annie G. Freeman struggled and made her presence known and felt after her death in this traveling funeral and in all the lives that she has touched because of that and because of them.

“I can’t really add anything to this,” Marie reminds them. “I knew her in a different way, when she was just totally perfect.”

“Damn it,” Katherine says, throwing her newly manicured feet onto the floor and clapping her hands together. “I guess this means we have to forgive her one more time. If she is listening, she is laughing like hell. I can guarantee that.”

Of course, they all agree, of course they have to forgive Annie and they have to remember this conversation that they will probably have many more times over the course of the other traveling funerals and reunions and trips to the cabin in Minnesota. Of course they will forgive Annie when they look out across the Pacific Ocean and think of the time they all went swimming on the coldest day of the year and then stumbled back to the car and drove half-baked to the cabin they had all rented in a town the size of a postage stamp that did not sell wine that came with corks and not screw-off caps.