The Second Sister (7 page)

Chapter 9

W
e say that we mourn the dead, and there is some truth in that.

We lament the flower frozen in full bloom, cut off at the moment of promise, or another long wilted, whose slow fading and drawn-out, painful diminishment cast a shadow over a vibrant and glorious past.

And yet.

Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living.

And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. We gaze upon the stillness that is unending and feel our self-importance crack and the myth of our immortality smash. We stare upon the face of death to see ourselves more clearly, to satisfy our curiosity, to make peace with the inescapable.

We hold our breath, try to imagine what it would be like never to take another and what the departed know now that we don't. We try to conjure what the life we have left would look like if such knowledge were ours. We try to imagine ourselves kind and expansive and giving, balanced and patient, more honest, more thankful, more peaceful, content with what we have, mindless of what we have not.

We imagine ourselves happy. For a moment, we believe we can be.

And then, because we can't help ourselves, we breathe and, breathing, are reminded of the many other things we cannot help.

The faith of a moment fades and hope is replaced by the intimate knowledge of our imperfections. Lonely, weeping, we stand with our feet anchored to the ground, watching our better angels fly above us and beyond us to time out of mind, and we mourn.

Chapter 10

I
heard the clearing of a throat.

“Lucy? May I close the lid now?”

My heart clenched like a fist inside me. I bent my head over the still form in the casket, brushed my fingers across the brown curls spread across the satin pillow. Her face was so still and pale, an expression carved from ivory, like the face of someone who reminded me of someone I used to know.

I wanted to say something, but couldn't remember what. I took a step back, trying to think what it could be. Mr. Sedgwick moved into the vacancy and placed his hands on the coffin lid.

“Wait!” The sound of my voice stayed his movements. “Wait a minute.”

I reached out and plucked a pink rose, still in bud, from the spray of flowers that stood nearby and carried it to the casket. I lifted the edge of a quilt of pink, green, and white, bound with periwinkle blue, and slid the long stem of the rose underneath so the flower was just peeping out, then pressed the fabric smooth across Alice's chest, tucking her in for the night ahead.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered and kissed my sister's forehead.

I lifted my head, took a last look, and turned to face the mortician and his sober-suited assistants.

“All right. You can close it now.”

I wasn't that surprised by the number of people who came to Alice's funeral; Father Damon had prepared me for that. But he forgot to mention the dogs.

Alice's part-time job at the pet rescue involved cleaning cages, walking dogs, feeding cats, administering routine medications, that kind of thing. I didn't realize she had also become a sort of unofficial adoption coordinator, going to great lengths to find homes for recently rescued or abandoned animals, a sort of human-animal yenta. Judging by the scores of her clients, both two- and four-footed, who came to pay tribute to her matchmaking skills, she must have been a good one.

People brought cages with cats, birds, even a rabbit. The dogs were on leashes, every breed and size, from a shivering Chihuahua that peeked nervously out of Amanda Lane's shoulder bag, to a lumbering Newfoundland named Bruce, who sat on his haunches in a seat instead of lying on the floor and took up half a pew.

I was nervous about the presence of so many four-footed mourners, but they all behaved; no fighting, barking, or peeing. In fact, until the end of the proceedings, there wasn't a peep out of any of the animals, except for the snoring of an elderly, jowly bulldog who fell asleep almost as soon as things began and that of his elderly, jowly owner, Mr. Coates, who ran the little upholstery shop that was housed in the basement of the hardware store.

When the organ prelude began I went into the church and sat in the front row, on the right-hand side. Barney sat with me, blowing his nose through the whole thing. There was no one else in the family pew. We are all that's left now.

Three women came in soon after and walked to the front, sitting in the first pew on the left.

The first was tall, probably five foot ten, looked to be in her late forties, and had sandy-colored hair cut in a short, layered bob that stuck out at odd angles. It was hard to tell if the style was intentionally edgy or if she had just neglected to comb it that morning.

The next woman was thin, almost wiry looking, about my height, five foot six, probably in her early to middle fifties, and had a determined set to her jaw, as though daring anyone to try to make her cry. She had dark brown eyes, close-cropped black hair, and coffee-colored skin, which, frankly, surprised me. When I was in high school, our class didn't have a single African American student. Time marches on, I guess, even in Nilson's Bay.

The last member of the trio, who couldn't have been more than twenty-five, was a petite little thing, barely topping the five-foot mark, with bright blue eyes and a unicorn tattoo on her forearm. In contrast to the somber suits worn by her companions, the young one wore a dress of hot pink with a turquoise belt and turquoise cowboy boots. Clearly, she was one of those people who preferred to approach funerals as celebrations of life, but she was sobbing uncontrollably.

This was the FOA: Friends of Alice—I was sure of it. And if I'd had any doubts, they were banished when I saw how many of the mourners gave them pitying glances as they passed through the aisle, reaching out to pat their hands and mouth words of condolence, a consideration no one had offered me when I had passed by.

Father Damon reminded me that people in Nilson's Bay can take a long while to accept strangers. Apparently, the policy also applied to people who had been gone so long they had become strangers.

Perhaps I deserved it.

I folded my hands in my lap and looked at the blush-pink spray of roses, thinking how much Alice would have loved them. I sent her pink roses every year for her birthday, and she always called to gush over them, as if she were surprised by their arrival. She may have been—Alice lived in the moment. I always felt very pleased with myself after those calls. Much as she loved flowers, what she'd have loved more was for me to deliver them in person. I didn't. And now I couldn't.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up and into the face of a man about my age, tall, with chestnut-colored hair and a beard, both neatly trimmed, and sympathetic brown eyes. His face seemed familiar.

“Lucy, I'm so sorry,” he whispered, and squeezed my shoulder.

I ducked my head to acknowledge his words, wishing I could summon up a name to go with those eyes, wondering if I should say thank you or just keep silent. It seemed so odd to respond with thanks in a situation that was clearly so sad. I looked up again, but he was already walking toward the back of the crowded church, looking for a vacant seat.

I looked at Barney, who was wiping away tears with the back of his hand. “Who was that?”

Barney glanced over his shoulder. “Peter Swenson. Did you hear? He was just elected to the village council.”

“That's Peter Swenson? Not the—”

The organ stopped abruptly. A bell rang and everyone rose. Father Damon, dressed in his violet vestments, entered to begin the mass.

 

I hadn't been to mass ten times in as many years. But the words of the liturgy, lodged in the deepest recesses of my memory, fell easily from my lips. There was some comfort in that, in submerging my voice into the murmurs of two hundred voices, in sinking to my knees and rising as one with the others. It made me feel less alone.

We had decided against the custom of opening the floor to allow people to say a few words about the deceased. Father Damon had urged me not to, saying it could take hours, Alice being so beloved in the community. He gave a eulogy instead. He'd asked if I'd like to do it, but I'd passed, saying I wasn't sure I'd be able to get through it without breaking down.

Father Damon made a good job of it. When he told the story of how she'd snuck into the feed store and freed a flock of baby chicks just before Easter, everyone laughed, including me. Though I didn't laugh quite as hard as the others. I'd never known anything about her staging a poultry prison break.

It suddenly occurred to me that almost anyone in the room would have given Alice a better eulogy than me, especially the three women sitting in the front left pew. I couldn't help but notice how Father Damon split his gaze equally between my pew and theirs as he spoke. It wasn't intentional, I was sure of that, but it was clear to me that he, like the others, considered the three Friends of Alice to be chief mourners at this funeral, those who had lost the most on this terrible day.

They were wrong.

Those three women, intimates to Alice but strangers to me, were mourning the loss of what they once had. I was mourning the loss of what I could have had but never would, the chance to really
know
my sister, to amass my own collection of funny, tender, and memorable Alice stories to treasure even in the void of death. I had no one to blame but myself.

As I cast my eyes forward to the polished wooden box, blanketed in pink roses, something cracked inside me. The tears I had been unable to shed flowed freely now. Barney, his own eyes red and raw, put his arm around me.

Father Damon finished his remarks, and I sank to my knees with the others, still weeping. Words of contrition I'd learned as a child emerged from my memory.

The words played an unending loop inside my head, rising from my mind and falling ineffectually back to earth, bringing no mercy, no relief. And then it was over; the mass was ended and we were instructed to go in peace.

If only it were as easy as that.

Barney and the other pallbearers came forward. The pianist began playing that old Carpenters song, “Bless the Beasts and the Children,” and a stubby-legged beagle in a pew near the back began to bay and every other dog in the room took up the cry, howling mournfully as the casket was carried down the aisle and out the door.

It was an odd way to end a funeral, but also strangely appropriate. As I watched the rose-covered casket carrying my sister's remains being loaded into the hearse for the journey to the cemetery, I couldn't help but think that Alice would have approved.

Chapter 11

S
itting in the back of a black sedan for the return trip from the cemetery, I felt drained. I wanted nothing more than to go back to Barney's house, crawl under the covers, and not speak to anyone for two or three days. But there was one more piece of the ritual yet to be performed, the post-funeral reception.

The car pulled up in front of St. Agnes's. Mr. Sedgwick's eldest son, Danny, jumped out of the driver's seat and ran around the car to open the door for me. The chill November air was startling after sitting in the warmth of the sedan. I stood on the sidewalk and watched as a long line of cars, stretching all the way around the corner, pulled into the church parking lot. One of those cars carried the FOA, who I really needed to talk to, so I could thank them for the quilt. Another carried Peter Swenson, who I really hoped to avoid.

 

In Nilson's Bay, funerals are potluck affairs.

People brought Crock-Pots of baked beans, trays of whole sliced hams, pans of lasagna, casserole dishes of Swedish meatballs, and platters of deviled eggs, as well as bowls of layered salads, cabbage salads, gelatin salads, pasta salads, and untold numbers of desserts. They laid them out on the waiting tables, set up by some women who had stayed behind during the graveside service to make sure everything was ready for our return. Almost immediately, a line formed and people began helping themselves to the buffet, piling their plates high.

Looking over the heads in the crowd, I saw Peter Swenson talking with Mr. Coates, who was holding his bulldog in his arms and shaking his jowly face in response to whatever it was Peter was saying. They were deep in conversation, so I took the opportunity to study my old high school classmate from the back.

He was a little taller than I remembered, maybe an inch, but he was not quite as muscular as he'd been back in the day. He looked good without quite so much muscle, less hulking. I wondered if he was still as cocky as he'd been in high school. Probably. Is there anything as cocky as a small-town athlete with real talent? Of course, our high school was so small—a total enrollment of fewer than three hundred even though it was the only school for the whole northern part of the county and served seventh through twelfth grades—that we didn't have any real sports teams aside from cross-country. Peter was the captain. In the winter he played “shinny hockey” on Kangaroo Lake with Clint Spaid, Jimmy Schrader, and whoever else they could round up for a scrimmage. He was a catcher in the summer baseball league, too, and held the record for home runs and stolen bases.

I remember how he'd crouch down like a crab during the game, skittering from right to left to right along the baseline, rattling the pitcher and charming the crowd, letting the anticipation build. Having seen him do it so many times before, they were waiting for that moment when he'd explode from the bag, run like the wind, and slide safely to the next base just ahead of the ball, drawing a hail of curses from the pitcher and an outburst of applause from the stands, before hopping to his feet, dusting off his pants, and settling his cap back on his head with an easy grin that said, “Didja like that? Wanna see me do it again?”

Of course they did. They never, ever got tired of seeing Peter Swenson swing a bat or steal a base. Generally, people in Nilson's Bay could never be accused of being overdemonstrative or throwing away compliments, but after the final inning they'd crowd around Peter, slapping his back and reliving the highlights of the game. Little kids sometimes even asked him to sign their baseballs.

No wonder he'd been such a cocky kid, the kind of kid you didn't see often in Nilson's Bay, a town that considered working hard, humility, and not drawing attention to yourself to be life's greatest virtues. But I guess every town needs a hero, somebody to be proud of. Peter Swenson had been ours.

But that kind of attention at such a young age generally isn't good for a person. I mean, how many washed-out former football stars reach their peak in the fall of their senior year and spend the rest of their lives growing a beer gut and going on about carrying the ball up the middle and winning a game ten, twenty, thirty years before? It's really pretty sad.

Except Peter Swenson didn't look sad. Nor did he have a beer gut. Was he still cocky?

Feeling my gaze, he turned his head and flashed me a grin, the same “I know you're watching me and I don't blame you” grin he'd had as a kid.

Yes. Still cocky.

He put his hand on Mr. Coates's shoulder, as if he might be excusing himself to come and talk to me. I slipped away before he could, heading to the opposite corner of the room, where I spotted the three members of the FOA sitting at a table in the corner. Barney had explained who was who among them. Rinda Charles, the African American woman, was the eldest. Daphne Olsen, the one with the stick-out hairdo, was about my age, though she looked older. And the young one with the unicorn tattoo was Celia Brevard, who was sitting with her head buried in her hands, still crying. Rinda and Daphne were trying to comfort her, patting her shaking shoulders and leaning down to whisper into her ear, but it didn't seem to be helping.

Before I could speak to them, I was waylaid by two silver-haired matrons, Betty and Carol, cochairs of the bereavement committee, who approached to press a plate of food upon me. I wasn't very hungry. Even if I had been, there really wasn't time for me to sit down and eat.

Though it seemed like people had gone out of their way to avoid me before the funeral, now that it was over they couldn't wait to talk to me. I'm not sure if it was because people in Nilson's Bay just take time to warm up to newcomers or because seeing my tears during the service had aroused their sympathy. Whatever the reason, they approached me now, eager to wring my hand and let me know how much Alice had meant to them.

A few also wanted to discuss the outcome of the election—some with approval, others with disdain. I'd never known people in Nilson's Bay to be that engaged politically, but it was clear that they'd been paying attention this year. Maybe having someone they knew once upon a time involved in such a high-profile campaign had piqued their interest. Most, however, wanted to talk about Alice.

Carla Erickson was among the first. She fought back tears as she told me about how Alice had come to her aid after her husband's death, two years before.

“I was a wreck after Fred died. The house was so empty and the days were so long. I almost didn't know how I could go on; I was that depressed. I hardly ever left the house. One day, Alice showed up on my doorstep with a basket of kittens. I never had a cat in my life,” Carla said, shaking her head to convey her surprise, “so I can't think why Alice would have thought to come to me, but the next thing I knew, I'd picked two kittens from the basket, sisters, marmalade with patches of white, and named them Mabel and Hilda.”

Carla paused in telling her story and swallowed back tears, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Honestly, I just don't know what I'd do without my girls or what might have become of me if Alice hadn't knocked on my door that day. Some people might say that Alice wasn't too bright, but she knew what I needed even before I did. She was such a blessing.”

Larry and Linda DeVine, the parents of two little boys, Daniel and Dylan, born just sixteen months apart, were next to seek me out. Elvis, their yellow Labrador, was with them. He made himself patiently comfortable on the floor as we talked, chin resting on his paws.

“The last thing I thought we needed was a dog,” Larry said. “I mean, with two boys who were constantly battling for our attention, things were chaotic enough. Then Alice showed up at our house with Elvis. She said that they didn't have any room at the pet rescue and that, if she couldn't find a family to take care of him for a week or so, just until they had more space, they might put him down.” Larry smiled and shook his head. “Like I said, the last thing we needed right then was a dog; that's what I thought, but . . . how could I say no to that face?”

Larry looked down at Elvis, who gazed at him with adoring eyes and started thumping his tail. Linda picked up the story.

“Before the end of the week, we'd completely fallen in love with Elvis and wouldn't have dreamed of sending him back. Instead of adding to the chaos, he actually helped calm things down. He's just so mellow and easygoing. The boys are so happy taking him for walks or playing ball with him that they don't have as much interest in picking on each other now. I think Alice knew exactly what she was doing when she came to our house that day. Your sister might not have been as . . .” Linda hesitated, frowning a little as she searched for a word. “. . . as quick as other people, maybe not sharp, but she was wise in her own way. And good. She had a big, big heart.”

Linda choked up as she finished, and her eyes filled with tears. So did mine.

“Thank you. I'm so happy you shared that with me,” I said.

The guilt and regret that had overcome me during the funeral, the sense of being surrounded by people who knew my sister better than I did, was still sharp. But when Mrs. Erickson, Larry, Linda, and others shared their stories, they became my stories, too, memories to cling to and smile over, to pass on to someone else, or would have been, had there been anyone left. I was the last Toomey. When I died, those memories would die with me. But they were alive for now, and knowing that helped dull my despair, at least a little.

I conjured an image of Alice in my mind, standing on the DeVines' front stoop with Elvis on a leash, her face as placid as always, her eyes calm and unblinking, as she related the doomed dog's fate and made a straightforward appeal for clemency, her voice as flat as her expression.

Once upon a time, Alice had been animated, even dramatic. But the accident had narrowed her emotional range and robbed her of all sense of irony. She talked in simple, concrete, utterly honest terms, telling it exactly as she saw it, lacking the ability to lie. Or so I thought. But the pet rescue was a no-kill shelter. Alice told me that no healthy animal was ever put down there.

Had she stretched the truth to get Larry DeVine to take Elvis in, knowing ahead of time how the scenario would play out? Maybe.

I smiled to myself. Maybe, as Linda said, Alice was wiser than she appeared.

Larry shook my hand again and looked at his wife, saying they should give some of the others a chance to talk to me. I looked up, glancing across the room and to the table where the FOA still sat, Celia looking more composed now, sipping a cup of punch while Daphne and Rinda talked with Father Damon and a couple of other people. I wanted to go speak with them, but couldn't break away yet. I was surrounded by a ring of people waiting for a word.

Peter Swenson was among them, standing just a little back, but trying to catch my eye. I pretended not to notice and shifted so Peter was removed from my line of sight and started talking to Mrs. Lieshout, the town librarian, who explained how Alice helped her adopt Mr. Carnegie, the fat and friendly library cat.

The story was similar to other tales of Alice's uncanny ability to match humans with just the right pet. But Mrs. Lieshout, being a reference librarian, embellished her story with interesting facts and figures, explaining that Mr. Carnegie was named after Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy industrialist and philanthropist who, between 1883 and 1929, built more than sixteen hundred public libraries throughout the United States, including the one in Nilson's Bay, a two-story, cut-stone edifice, built in the Scottish baronial style, and that since Mr. Carnegie had “joined the staff,” library visitation was up by 13 percent, which had enabled her to get a fifteen-thousand-dollar grant to buy new computers and add to the children's collection.

“None of that,” she declared, “would have happened if Alice hadn't shown up in my office three years ago and plopped Mr. Carnegie right down in my lap. She knew he was the right cat for the job. Alice had a way with animals. She understood them. Better, perhaps, than she did people. Or than people understood her.” A look came into her eye, one that said she must just have said too much; then she quickly added, “Nilson's Bay just won't be the same without her,” before giving me a squeeze and scurrying away.

There were more conversations after that. When I got through the last of them, I turned to my right, relieved to see that Peter was gone, and then to my left, looking across the room to an empty table in the corner. The FOA was gone too.

I was irritated at myself for letting them slip away. They'd been closer to Alice than anyone else in town. I wanted to thank them for the quilt, but even more than that, I wanted to talk to them about Alice, to know what she'd been doing during the last few weeks, if she'd seemed at all sad or out of sorts. Father Damon had assured me that Alice's overdose was accidental. I wanted to believe him, but still . . . I would just have to find them later.

I was anxious to leave Nilson's Bay as soon as possible, but knew I'd be stuck here for at least a few days, perhaps a week, wrapping up Alice's financial affairs and closing up the cottage. I planned to go over and start cleaning things out the next day. I needed to find a Realtor too. It was a little late in the year to put it on the market, but maybe some wealthy guy from Chicago or Milwaukee would decide that a lakeside cottage in Door County would make a good Christmas gift for his wife.

The crowd was beginning to thin out. The apron-clad church ladies had cleared the buffet tables of entrées, salads, and savories and were in the kitchen wrapping up the leftovers. But the dessert table was still intact, loaded with tray upon tray of “bars,” the rectangular cookies Midwesterners are raised on.

In Nilson's Bay, the baking of bars had evolved into something of a competition. Every woman in the village had her own family recipe, passed down in great secrecy through generations. The names of these confections—Dream Again Bars, Better Than Yours Bars, Chubby Hubby Bars, Princess and the Pea Bars—almost never listed the ingredients or described their flavors, an attempt to throw would-be recipe thieves off the trail.