Going to the Chapel (5 page)

Miss Billings lets go of the end of her tape measure and the thing spins back into its little box. “Not everyone likes to be touched.”

This is even getting creepier.
“But how—”

Miss Billings looks at me and just smiles. “We have a form that people and their families can fill out before they need our services. Some people prefer the natural look and don’t want to have makeup.” She walks over to the receptionist desk and writes something on a piece of paper before looking up at me again. “That’s always a mistake in my opinion. People wear makeup when they’re alive. They need it even more when they’re dead. I mean, just because you’re dead that’s no excuse to look bad. It’s your big day—you’ve got the final viewing, then the funeral. People might want pictures. No, you need to look good.”

I nod. I could probably use some of that makeup about now myself.

“I won’t have to?” I swallow.

“Oh, dear me, no,” Miss Billings says. “You would need to have experience before you could do that.”

That’s not totally reassuring, but I’m not going to press my luck.

Mr. Z decides I can start even without the suit as long as I stay in the back and don’t interact with the customers. That is just fine with me.

“I’m a size ten,” I tell Miss Billings as I head toward the back room where Mr. Z is leading me. “I bet you get lots of size ten women coming in to look for work.”

Miss Billings nods and I feel relieved. I mean, just in case my temporary is even more temporary than I suspect, I wouldn’t want them to have a suit made up that no one else could wear later.

Now that I think of it, isn’t it kind of odd that Mr. Z makes suits for everyone? What kind of an employer makes suits for his employees? I know restaurants sometimes do that, but that’s if they have something peculiar like chicken costumes or those red fish-head masks.

I’m not that wild about wearing a black suit all the time, but I’ve got to tell you I’d rather wear that than a fish head.

I’m almost through the lobby before it occurs to me that Mr. Z might also be making suits for the dead people. Maybe that’s why he has a system all set up with a tailor and everything. I wonder if, when I leave, a dead person will wear the suit I leave behind.

“Do people have their own clothes when they come to be buried?” I ask Mr. Z.

“We pride ourselves on having a well-dressed clientele,” Mr. Z says as he opens the door to the back room. “We don’t let clients go on view unless they are appropriately attired.”

I decide I should buy some clothes with my first paycheck. I haven’t thought much about preparing for death, but I can tell you this, I don’t want a Mr. Z somewhere deciding what I wear for the—you know, my big day. These black suits can’t look that good no matter how much Pearly Pink makeup someone uses on your cheekbones. Besides, if I die anytime soon, I want to look as if I was a fun person while I was living. Maybe Cassie would promise to ask Aunt Inga to bury me in this pink suit I’m wearing now.

I never knew a mortuary could have so many forms. There are two rows of file cabinets in the back room, which is also the break room. One whole side of the room is covered with this big white board that you can mark on. It has the work schedule on the right side and the funeral schedule on the left side with little numbers here and there as though someone calculated a worker to funeral ratio.

I am not sure I like having my name there, but Mr. Z marks me in for the day anyway. There is my name in big black letters not two feet away from the listing of who is up for their final viewing. I wonder if Mr. Z ever gets the rows confused and puts an employee on the dead list or a dead person on the employee list. Wouldn’t that be creepy if I came in some day and my name was on the wrong list?

I don’t like thinking about the board so I look down at the basket of forms Mr. Z has given me to file. One
basket has forms the family has filled out describing their wishes for the services at the mortuary. The other basket is signed contracts for financial arrangements.

I take a peek at one of the financial forms. Yikes. I can’t afford to die yet, that’s for sure.

I decide to file the Request for Services forms first and leave the financial stuff for last since it’s a little alarming.

I am halfway through filing the requests when I notice that some of the forms have little handwritten notes at the bottom. Here’s one of them: A Mr. Weston asks that his wife’s hair be dyed blond for the ceremony. “She always wanted to be a blonde,” he wrote. “I regret now that I didn’t encourage her to just do it. I regret a lot of things I didn’t encourage her in.”

As I’m reading Mr. Weston’s note, I have one of those moments of understanding. That note could be coming from my husband fifty years from now—not that I even know who that will be, but I do know myself. I know I am impulsive about some things, but they are mostly the small things like deciding to paint my toenails purple.

When it comes to important things like my relationship with mother, I have never done anything impulsive. I wanted my mother’s approval so much I could barely move when I saw her. I certainly never had the nerve to ask her what she thought about me or why she never took me to live with her. I was a coward with her. Not knowing if you are loved can make you feel so insecure you don’t do anything. Would it be that way for me around my husband unless I knew he really loved me?

Would I someday be like Mrs. Weston and not even have enough confidence to dye my hair a different
color without fretting about it and wondering if the person I loved would like it? I feel sad for her, and even a little bit for Mr. Weston.

Then I think about Elaine. The way Aunt Ruth has always bragged about Elaine, I bet Elaine will never hesitate to do anything because she is afraid she will lose someone’s love. I don’t think even Gary will make her question herself. I’ve wondered all along if Elaine loves Gary, but I’ve never wondered if she believes
he
loves
her.
Elaine probably believes the whole world, except for maybe me, loves her. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be a half anything to anyone. She’s always important.

I wonder what that kind of confidence would feel like. I’m sure Elaine doesn’t question whether or not God likes her well enough to do her bidding. She is probably always praying for things. She’s never known my kind of insecurity. Knowing her, she probably even thinks Gary’s parents are going to be her fans once they get to know her a little better.

I decide to stop on my way back to Cassie’s and get some of that wash-in hair gel. I may not be able to change myself, but I can look more confident. Even though my hair has outgrown some of its redness and is a nice auburn now, it wouldn’t hurt to have some of those red sparkly streaks in it to really liven it up. I might even get some of those cheap sunglasses that have all kinds of colors around the rim.

The more I think about it, the more I decide Mr. Weston is on to something. His wife should have dyed her hair. If you look exciting, it’s easier to be a confident person. I set the Weston form aside. I want to be
sure Miss Billings knows about the hair color. Maybe she’ll even go with a brighter blush on Mrs. Weston. I’ll have to ask her—Miss Billings, that is.

I
’ve been at the Big M—that’s what everyone calls the mortuary—for a week and a day now and I’ve told Cassie all about it. We still can’t believe I’m working in a mortuary. That’s part of the reason I haven’t told anyone but Cassie yet. I figure I should be comfortable with my job before I go announcing it to the world.

We are at Cassie’s apartment and she looks up from the plant she is repotting. She has sort of a plant rescue thing going with the floral shop that she manages. She can’t stand to see plants thrown out when they become damaged so she brings them home and nurses them back to health. Cassie usually does the repotting on the weekend, but she got a no-information letter back from some network where adopted kids can leave word for their real parents to contact them and, when Cassie is upset, she needs to repot something, so here we are.

Cassie is sitting on the floor close to the wooden
crate that serves as a coffee table. Her wooden floor has lost its shine, but the grain of the wood gives her small apartment the feeling of home. Cassie made some rag rugs for her floor and we are each sitting on one with our legs crossed.

I’m wondering if I should say something more to Cassie about her letter, but she’s already told me twice tonight that she’s okay so I figure she doesn’t want to talk about it yet, even though I know it has to be discouraging to know her mother hasn’t been looking for her the way Cassie has been looking for her mother.

It is Monday evening and we’ve both had a long day. The root-bound ficus Cassie is pressing into a new pot still doesn’t look too happy and I am filing my nails and feeling guilty that I’m not doing more to save distressed plants. Of course, I’m saving my cuticles so that should count for something even if my cuticles aren’t another living thing and didn’t appear all that distressed to begin with, even if the puce polish was starting to chip off my nails.

“Anything happen at work today?” Cassie asks as she puts some more dirt around the ficus.

“Mrs. Weston’s daughter came by to thank Miss Billings for making her mother look so nice for the final viewing.” I had already told Cassie about Mr. Weston’s request that his wife’s hair be dyed blond and Cassie agrees I should wear more red streaks in my hair. “The daughter seemed real nice. You could tell she had been close to her mother just by the way she talked about her.”

I figure this is Cassie’s chance to bring up her mother if she’s ready to talk about it.

“Real close to her mother,” I add.

I am silent for a minute to let Cassie say something about her birth mother, even if it’s just to say that the woman doesn’t deserve to have a daughter who wants to know her.

“Doug stopped by the floral shop today,” Cassie says instead.

“Oh.” I grunt and decide to file the nail on my little finger again. You can’t be too careful about getting your nails smooth. Apparently, Cassie doesn’t want to talk any more about her mother right now. But that doesn’t mean I want to talk about Doug, either.

“I thought he looked a little sad,” Cassie adds.

“Did he say he was sorry?”

Cassie is quiet for a minute. “I thought maybe you would say you were sorry to him.”

“Me? I didn’t leave me standing at my cousin’s engagement party without a date. He backed out of our agreement. If there had been any money involved, I could take him to small claims court and get a refund. That’s how much he let me down.”

Cassie is patting a little more dirt around the ficus plant. As I said she is a mother to any plant or creature that needs help. That’s why I’m not surprised she says what she does next. “I think he was hurt. He made this big speech about people not saying thank you anymore—something about it showing the decline of civilization as we know it.”

“I don’t think bad manners will doom a civilization.”

At least I hope bad manners won’t doom a civilization. It’s an awful lot of pressure to put on a casual thank-you.

Cassie shrugs. “I told Doug how things were between you and Elaine. I don’t think he knew how important that party was to you.”

“You
what?
”

Cassie waves her hand to reassure me. “Just in very general terms. Nothing specific, but I think he might have got it. He might even agree to be your date for the wedding. If not, I can always ask my cousin Bobby to come down for that.”

You might have noticed that Cassie is always looking for reasons for Bobby to come down. Her favorite relative is Bobby. He’s adopted her better than anyone else in the family. He doesn’t worry about whether she’s an adopted cousin or a real cousin; he just really likes having her for a cousin. Some people I know could take a lesson from him.

Still, I hate to have Cassie ask him for another favor, even if he did back out of the last favor she requested. Besides, there’s the whole wife thing and I don’t want to cause some woman somewhere any unnecessary pain.

“Did Doug actually say he would go with me again to something?”

“No, but he seemed very open about things,” Cassie says. “He told me to tell you to give him a call and he left his number. I was impressed that he stopped by my work. He could have just gone to the coffee shop and then left with a to-go cup or something. But he opened the door to our shop and just walked up to the counter and asked for me.”

“He probably found it morally bracing to demand an apology.”

I had told Cassie about Doug going to the rally so she knew all about the morally bracing time he had there.

“I don’t think he was demanding anything, “Cassie said. “Even when he was going on about civilization, I could see his heart wasn’t in it. I think he just didn’t know what to say.”

We were silent for a moment.

“I could write him a thank-you note I guess,” I finally say. “Just in case he comes by your shop again. Then you could give it to him.”

If Doug was going to be braced up morally, I could be braced even more. “And a coffee coupon. I could give him a coffee coupon.”

I always think those coffee coupons make such a classy little gift, don’t you? I’ll show Doug that civilization has nothing to fear from my lack of social graces. Besides, I may become desperate again. It’s not as though I have many other options if I want someone to be my date for Cassie’s wedding. If he and I did go, I’d definitely make it clear that we are only in this until after Elaine’s wedding, though. I don’t need a repeat of the dumping scene.

Cassie doesn’t respond to my comment about the coffee coupon because the phone rings. She’d already agreed not to answer it, but I can see her hand almost twitching to do so. We’ve had a hard time with the telephone this week.

“You’ve got to tell your aunt about the job eventually,” Cassie says.

For the past week, I’ve managed to just leave messages on Aunt Inga’s telephone. Every time she’s called I’ve returned the call when I’ve known she
wouldn’t be home and left a message for her. Neither Cassie nor I have answered the phone since we got back from Palm Springs. The good thing is that, because of the messages I leave her, it looks as if I’m trying to talk to Aunt Inga even if I’m actually carefully avoiding her. I’ve called her when I knew she was at choir rehearsal and when she had a dental appointment. Today is a bad day, though. She normally wouldn’t be going anywhere today and I don’t want her to worry that something has happened to me.

“You can’t avoid talking to her forever,” Cassie says.

“I don’t even know if the mortuary job will last very long,” I say in my own defense. I’ve thought about this. “There’s no point in upsetting the aunts for something that might just be a funny memory by the end of the month. They might never need to know.”

I hear Aunt Inga’s voice come in on the message machine. “Julie, Julie, are you there? It’s Aunt Inga. I need to talk to you. Call me when you get a chance.”

In my messages, I’ve told Aunt Inga about the beautiful old church and the cousin of a movie star who came by the other day. He was Very Good-Looking, by the way. Miss Billings swore the man looked like a young Cary Grant. He was a safe topic for a message to Aunt Inga. I have carefully avoided any mention of either brides or dead people in the chatty messages I’ve left for her. Architecture and visitors I considered safe. I mentioned the roses and the courtyard. I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell Aunt Inga every little bit of the whole truth.

Cassie frowns. “You’re going to have to tell your aunt what you’re doing pretty soon.”

“I know.”

I must admit it is not as bad as I thought it would be working at the Big M. I mean there are no ghosts walking around and you smell roses all day long. Plus, it seems noble somehow to help people arrange the way they want to pay their respects to the dead—or the “dearly departed” as we are taught to say.

I got my black suit late last week and have actually been talking with the bereaved. I have done pretty well, except I got confused at first. Instead of “dearly departed,” I said “dearly beloved” a lot. But no one seemed to mind and now I’ve got it down. I bet I’m going to say
dearly
more often at the Big M than I would if I were a wedding planner. As I said, I kind of like it there.

Of course, even if I actually have to tell my aunts that I work in a mortuary, I could never tell them that I’ve come to like my job with the dead. That’s even worse than having the job in the first place.

Besides, I’m not giving up my dream of being a wedding planner. I’m carefully keeping track of the things I do at the Big M so that when I do apply for a wedding job, I’ll be able to say I helped place the flowers where the family wanted them and coordinated the guest seating or arranged the receiving line.

It’s amazing how much the two jobs are the same—you have the processionals, the tears, the flowers, the special music. Substitute bridesmaids for pallbearers and you have it made. If I keep seeing my job at the Big M as a stepping-stone to my real future as a wedding planner, that helps me keep things in focus.

“I thought your aunt sounded a little stressed in the
last message,” Cassie says. “Maybe you should just call and be sure she’s okay.”

“You don’t think something’s wrong?” I stand up and am already walking toward the phone. I never thought that something might be wrong with Aunt Inga. I was just worried that she’d be worried about me. I mean, I’m in Hollywood and she’s in Blythe. Nothing ever happens in Blythe. Unless…“Maybe that dentist appointment I remembered was really a doctor’s appointment.”

Cassie is frowning now, too. “I don’t think—”

“For all I know Aunt Inga could be dying,” I say. I know it sounds melodramatic to think that she’s dying, but one thing I’ve learned during this past week is that people do die. All kinds of people die. And, in too many cases, the people next to them don’t even suspect the person is going to die. That’s one of the reasons everyone has so many regrets.

I’m dialing the phone and trying to remember the types of pills that Aunt Inga is taking.

“What did the doctor say?” I ask Aunt Inga the minute she says “hello.”

“Julie? Is that you?”

The relief in my aunt’s voice makes me wish I’d called her back sooner. “I’m here now. I can come home anytime you need me. Remember that. I can quit my job in a heartbeat.”

“But you can’t quit your job,” Aunt Inga protests. “What would we do then?”

“Well, I’d only quit if you were sick.”

“Who’s sick? Nobody around here has time to be sick. Not since we got the bad news.”

I knew there was a problem here somewhere. I brace myself. “What bad news?”

“I guess it’s not so terribly bad,” Aunt Inga continues. “I mean Aunt Gladys has her boys folding some origami flowers to be scattered on the bridal tables. I’m crocheting some of those roses to be used for petals in the aisle if we need them—I was going to do pink, but Elaine wants orange so I’m doing orange.”

“You’re crocheting roses and the boys are folding origami flowers? The boys—my cousins?” I can’t picture my cousins doing that. They all played football in high school. All of them. And they won. They’re built like tanks.

“Well, I think Jerry might be out trying to buy a hundred orange taper candles at the moment so he’s not folding right now. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find orange taper candles?”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m worried your uncle Howard is going to have a stroke. He’s been staying in his room and he won’t come out. I haven’t seen him for two days.”

I know Elaine’s wedding is going to be elaborate, but I can’t understand why everyone in the family is in such a panic. “I thought that’s why Aunt Ruth hired a professional wedding planner—I thought the planner would do all of these things so no one else would have to worry about them.”

Aunt Inga is silent. “It seems the wedding planner was—well, I always thought Ruth got recommendations, but…”

Aunt Inga is silent again.

“Did the wedding planner quit?”

“I don’t think you’d call it that exactly, but she’s definitely gone.”

I’m beginning to feel a hot ball of something in my stomach. I’m a little glad that, for once, everything isn’t going smoothly for Elaine. But I’m also a little worried about Aunt Inga and my cousins and even, to be honest, Aunt Ruth and Elaine. Worrying about them makes me feel a little disloyal to my mother, but I figure it’s only a short-term worry. And, really, I don’t need to worry too much. “Even if the wedding planner is gone, I know she already made all of these plans. She got everything lined up—the church and the caterer and the band for the reception. Elaine told me how much each one of those things costs so I know the woman got those things arranged at least. Even if she left before every little thing was done, you can hire someone else to just follow her plans. It might not go as smoothly as it would have with the original wedding planner, but no one needs to be crocheting flowers.”

Aunt Inga takes a deep breath. I can hear her inhale over the phone. Then she lets it out. “The crocheting is just to keep me busy so I won’t worry. I just feel like I should be doing something and I don’t know what else to do.”

“Well, what you shouldn’t do is worry. Nothing good comes from worrying.”