Grave Concern (44 page)

Hille's mouth, as Kate was speaking, had fallen open in an O.

“Oh my God,” said Kate, “I can't believe I just said that.”

Hille's capital O became a small n. “You mean you
don't
want me?”

“Oh! No, no, I
do
want you! It's the ‘win-win-win' bullshit I can't stand. I can't believe I actually said that.” Kate began pinching her cheeks and arms. “What's happening to me?”

Hille lifted the teapot and poured Kate's cup first. “Did you forget the teabag?” she said. Kate leaned forward and looked. Not a hint of colour in the hot water. There was a pause, and quietly Hille said, “I think it just proves you're human.” She slipped a quick glance down her recently reno-ed chest. “Like the rest of us.”

Kate and Leonard sat facing each other in the bottom of the Smithers family canoe, floating down the river, backs propped against the wooden seats, bare feet flung over the gunwales. The autumn sky had achieved that perfect cerulean balance between robin's egg and indigo blue. The leaves — poplar, aspen, hazelnut, maple — were afire.

Every once in a while one of the lovers would dip a paddle in to correct their meandering course between the banks. For lovers they were, making plans for a future together. Kate had plucked up the nerve to ask Leonard about children. Didn't he want them? And now that he was attaching himself to a barren old hag like herself, would he, sometime in the future, come to regret their absence? All he would need to do is find someone a decade younger, rather than older, in order to ensure a fertile future of bouncing babies.

“My sister's kids are enough for me,” Leonard said. “I love to see them, but I love to see them go home again. The perfect arrangement. And you?”

“Well, unless there's some kind of second coming of my monthly cycle, upon which I would be seriously alarmed, I'd say conception is highly improbable.”

“You didn't answer the question.”

“Which was?”

“Don't you want them?”

Kate twisted her mouth, and shrugged.

“There's always adoption,” Leonard said, with less than wholehearted enthusiasm.

“Yeah, but I'm not all that keen. At this age, frankly, I just don't have the jam. Besides, think of the poor kid. A mom old enough to be a grandmother.”

“Yeah, but a ripped and charismatic Bogart of a dad.”

Kate suppressed a laugh. Leonard was anything but ripped. Not soft, mind you, but lean and quick. “Yuck. Bogart was such a chauvinist. At least in the films.”

“Yeah, but tough and manly, right? Not so sure about good-looking, though,” Leonard admitted. “Okay, so it's decided. No kids. Next item on the agenda.”

“What about this business arrangement?” probed Kate. “How exactly is this going to work?”

“You tell me,” Leonard said, tugging down his ball cap and closing his eyes.

“Okay. Here's my idea. Some kind of mixing and melding, like Krebs and Krebs — sorry,
Krebs Life Passage Services
— did. But more tasteful, if that's possible. I showed you those graves, right?”

“Yeah. They were awful. You're gonna make me do that? And I thought fixing computers was bad.”

“Not like those
exactly
. Something in the same vein, minus the tacky. You got a better plan?”

Leonard pushed his ball cap back and ran his hand over his face. He looked over the gunwale, momentarily looked surprised, then sat back again, satisfied. “Okay,” he said. “Here's the plan. We do full audiovisual slide shows of the person's life, with tasteful music and some discreet commentary on the high points of their career-slash-family life.”

“Yeah, but where? You're gonna do this on the gravestones? Besides, no one has gravestones anymore, they're all getting compressed and made into benches.”

“Huh?” Leonard said.

“Never mind,” Kate said.

They said no more, and the canoe drifted on. Kate's head lolled back on the seat, and she stared up at the sky. Puffy clouds sat here and there like white cowboy hats. Kate thought of her former prairie city and how when VIPs came to town, they were ceremonially “white hatted,” given a custom-made, high-quality white cowboy hat. Next, her thoughts drifted to her parents' funeral, herself sitting in the pew, unable to conceive what was clearly unfolding before her eyes. There, in the church she had come to as a little girl, in her hometown, surrounded by people familiar to her as family, she'd felt more disoriented than she ever had in her years away. Cut adrift, sans anchor, roots yanked up.

In the few days before the service, even as she grieved, hardly feeling creative, she'd scrambled to cobble together a visual record of her parents' lives for a display in the church vestibule, to satisfy what she felt was an expectation. In the end, she had created a poster with photos and bits of poetry. People said it was lovely, but to Kate it had seemed ridiculously puny in the face of two whole lives lost.

“I've got it,” Kate said suddenly. “Here's what we're going to do.”

Something in her tone made Leonard sit up straighter.

“We're going to shift focus,” she said, “from the grave to the funeral. We're going to direct movies — you are, anyway — and I'm going to develop and structure the scenes and do background research. In fact we could customize the whole ceremony, pre-plan with the family before the actual, uh, event.”

“Movies?” Leonard said. “Uh, Kate, this is Pine Rapids we're talking, not Hollywood.”

“These are going to be custom-made funeral movies — short, high-quality audiovisual presentations shown as part of the funeral service. People hire us to take the stress off right when they're grieving most, or preferably, months or even years before the loved one dies. People could have input into their own funeral planning, even — photos, music, stuff like that. Our job is to put it all together, not some lame PowerPoint but using proper video techniques. It'll be creative, tasteful, understated. With real feeling. Like a compressed reliving of the person's life. Those who knew the deceased can cry and laugh over the memories, and those who didn't — uh, well, they get to see what he or she was all about. And then, oh Leonard, I've got it. You know how people set up websites for people who died? They could hire us to do little videos for the site.”

Leonard said nothing as he took all this in. “What about Grave Concern? What'll happen to the grave-tending? You still going to do that?”

“Of course,” said Kate, “but I'll need some help.”

“Not me,” Leonard said. “I'm going to have my hands full with selling cameras and computers, and going out on house calls. And, by the sounds of it, directing movies and making videos for websites.”

“Hey, when did you add the cameras?”

“Just now.”

“But isn't it what you've always loved? The whole movie thing — the acting, the directing, the
process
?”

“I guess I could produce something half-decent, given a chance.”

“So I've been thinking,” said Kate. “I'll keep doing graves, but there may be times when I'm too busy with funeral research and planning. So that's where Hank Dixon comes in.”

“Hank Dixon?”

“You know, the shy guy up the highway at the RV place?”

“Oh yeah.”

“He loves hanging out at the graveyard, talking to his ghosts. He's a real sweetie, and he could probably use the cash.”

“What cash?” Leonard groaned. “Paying someone else is a scary prospect, Kate.”

“I know. We're just going to have to grow up. And by the way, we may have a second employee.”

“What? Kate, you're going to give me a heart attack.”

“I figure we're going to need someone in the office, at least part-time. What if both you and I are gone? 'Cuz we will be, for long stretches. Someone's got to man the phones and the front desk.”

“And you've got someone in mind. You've already asked them, in fact.”

“Right.”

“I knew it. Who, may I ask?”

Kate took a sudden interest in a large bird swinging around the top of a large pine. “I know it's maybe not your
first choice
, but I promise you'll get to like her in time.”

“Her. Well, we've established the gender.”

“Hille Hatter.”

“Kate!” Leonard smacked his forehead and groaned.

“Please, Leonard. She's really not as dizzy as she looks. She even had her, you know,
implants
out.”

“What'll she do for brains now?”

“I'll overlook that sexist comment, Leonard. Pretend I never heard. We'll hire her on a probationary basis. I promise she'll be great. She does have redeeming qualities.”

“Such as?”

“You'll see when the time comes.”

“She got any experience?”

“Worked in a laser hair removal office, as far as I know.”

“That's comforting.”

“So what're we going to call it?”

“Call what?”

“Our new business. Business needs a name.”

“How about Ditzy Death and Digital?” Leonard suggested.

Kate gave him The Look.

They finally settled on
PLAY IT AGAIN, HO LAM!
despite Leonard's misgivings about perpetuating a misquotation. “It was ‘Play it, Sam,' not ‘Play it
again
',” he pouted. “Well, until Woody Allen got hold of it.”

But Kate had another worry. “Will anyone under fifty get the reference?”

“Possibly not,” said Leonard. “But not too many people under fifty are burying their dead. And if there's anything there's a glut of out here in the boonies, it's old folks. Young ones have all split for the city.”

“Like us, once,” Kate said, dabbling her fingers in the river. She scooped up some water and flicked a spray of iridescent droplets toward him.

“I don't know if this is relevant,” Leonard said, “but I've got a feeling Flower Power might be up for sale soon.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“There's a brand-new
FOR SALE
sign outside the back door, waiting to be used. I think our friend Ms. Waters is finding it tough going.”

“I thought things were perking up — and I work there!”

“How recently have you worked there, Kate?”

“Uh.” Now that she thought about it, Gwyneth hadn't called her in a couple of weeks. Kate had been too preoccupied to notice. Had Gwyneth, who seemed so content, or as content as Gwyneth could be, have fallen on hard times? “So what are you suggesting?”

“The Smithers Ho Lam expansion into Ms. Waters' space.”

“But Leonard, there's a couple of stores in between!”

“Even better.
PLAY IT AGAIN
over Gwyneth's, and
HO LAM
! over the old place. Empire building, Kate. We've got to think big, move with the times.”

“Speaking of moving,” Kate said, sitting up. “How far have we come downriver?” Looking around, she recognized nothing. “Oh my God, we must be halfway to Valleyview. Leonard, get up, get up!”

They both scrambled up onto the seats. To Leonard's alarm, Kate spun them around, facing upriver.

“Okay,” she said, “I'm going to do something called a ‘ferry.' Just keep paddling.”

The canoe began to slide, as though by magic, toward the bank, where the water was quieter, the current less pressing. At the spot where they came in, a huge weeping willow, likely seeded years ago from a town garden, reached out over the water like a misplaced green umbrella among the gnarly aspen and pine.

“Now, pull hard!” Kate instructed. They began to gain some momentum, and Leonard pronounced their teamwork awesome.

“Agreed,” said Kate. “But there's still a lot of sweat between here and home.”

Leonard leaned into his paddle. Together, they held a steady forward course against the current, hugging the riverbank.