The Undertaker's Daughter

For my father

In Memoriam

And for my mother

 AUTHOR'S NOTE 

T
he names of places and many people in this book have been changed, including those in the author’s own family.

To Be Sure

I wouldn’t want to bring him back

from his permanent interment

even if I could

but I wouldn’t mind a visit now and then,

a trip down

to keep each other company.

I could push back the top of the concrete liner,

pull up the half lid of that quite tasteful furniture

that is now his home

and fill him in

on the news of the business and my life

since he’s been gone.

He’s easier to talk to now

and I miss him

more than I thought I would,

more than I thought I could.

Always expected his going

would set me free

and now I am

surprised really

that his new silence

and contained grace

leave me finally free

to love him and to grieve.

LARRY SORKIN

 PROLOGUE 

“M
ayfield and Son Funeral Home.” My father answered the phone using his undertaker voice.

My mother stopped fiddling with her gloves and strained to hear his responses.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Shh!” She put her finger to her lips, clearly annoyed.

He placed the phone back on the receiver and met her worried eyes with a somber look.

“Frank?”

He didn’t answer her.

“Okay.” Defeated, she threw her gloves down on the table. “Who died?”

He tilted his head back and laughed. “Got you, didn’t I?”

“That is not funny. It’s just not funny at all.”

He winked at me. “I got your mother real good.”

“Yeah, you sure did, Daddy!”

When your house is a funeral home, you spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for someone to die. But there were days, like this one, when we’d rather they didn’t.

My mother frowned at me. “I’m going to Mildred’s to get my hair done. I want you to stay up here and out of Belle’s way. Don’t go downstairs, do you hear me? I don’t want you underfoot bothering your daddy.”

“Okay.”

“What?” She looked up from rummaging through her handbag.

“I mean, yes.”

“Yes what?” she snapped.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s better.”

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked my father when my mother left the room.

“She’s a little tense. She’s afraid she’ll have to cancel the bridge party if we get a body.” He went to the kitchen counter and downed his second double Alka-Seltzer of the day.

It had happened before. On the eve of a long-planned bridge luncheon, the phone rang during supper. Its distinct, long tone was a sound I would never forget. After a short conversation, my father looked at my mother and said, “I’ve got to go pick up Mr. Rayner.”

She threw out most of the deviled eggs that night. What a mess they looked in the garbage: a mound of shiny egg whites smeared with pale yellow yolks all smashed together, the whole lot spattered with deep red paprika, as if they’d been murdered.

Today we monitored my father’s expression with apprehension as he spoke into the phone again; his eyes and a slight shake of his head told us no, this was not a death call. Our housekeeper,
Belle, who’d grown accustomed to these pauses, shifted quickly back into gear with the food preparations.

Bridge-party food was like no other sort. Belle spooned wiggly, lime-green, congealed salad onto iceberg-lettuce leaves, then placed them with precision on paper-doily-lined plates. Chicken Surprise was a concoction of chicken, grapes, Miracle Whip, nuts, and unidentifiable morsels that made my eyes water when I tasted it. Belle rustled around with crackling sounds in a stiff, shiny black dress accented by a white collar and white-cuffed sleeves. She wore a fancy white apron with a ruffled border. The dress made her look like she worked for us, and I didn’t like that, even though she did.

“Why are you wearing a costume, Belle?”

“Not a costume. It’s jest a nicer dress ’cause yer mother’s havin’ comp’ny.”

I snuck around behind her and untied her apron. It delighted me to see it fall to the floor.

“I ain’t got time for this today. I’m gonna git a switch after you if you don’t behaves yerself.” An empty threat.

“Who told you to wear that dress, Belle?”

“Nobody. I wears it myself. I owns it. Now run along and leave me be. Come back later and I’ll fix you some lunch. And takes them trousers off and puts on a dress, ya hear?”

After my mother returned from the beauty parlor, she and Belle focused on preparing the dining room. The funeral-home phone rang all morning in spurts, as usual, but on bridge-luncheon day it was like watching a game of musical chairs. My mother and Belle scurried around working to make things perfect; the phone rang, they froze, waited for a sign that all was well; and then resumed a new position. Good Lord, I thought, who would have the bad grace to depart this life at such an inconvenient time?

Just before noon, the first of the seven hat-wearing, glove-toting ladies paraded through the front entrance to the funeral home. My father held the door open for them.

“Afternoon, Becky Lou . . . Mrs. Appleton . . . Mary Daley.” He nodded to each of them in turn.

“Frank, how are you?” they chorused.

“You ladies are well turned out today, but I think there must be some misunderstanding. The luncheon is tomorrow,” he said amiably.

Their eyes froze in horror.

“But . . . I’m sure . . . isn’t today Tuesday?”

He burst into laughter. “Oh, I’m just kidding you! You all go on upstairs, now.”

“Well, Frank, I swanee.”

My father was comfortable around women. He always seemed to know just the right thing to say. Flattered by his teasing, the ladies glowed as they climbed the stairs to our living quarters.

The odor of their hairspray preceded them as they entered the dining room and remarked favorably on its transformation. They might even forget they were in a funeral home. The room felt spacious in spite of the toile wallpaper. A small, tiled fireplace framed by a wooden mantelpiece, normally a focal feature in other homes, stood tucked away in a corner of the room. On the other side of the room was one of my father’s recent finds—a seventy-five-year-old child’s coffin. He had commissioned a carpenter to attach four tall, elegant legs to support its tender weight. The lid was propped open to expose an empty space from which the lemony color of the pine glared back at those who were brave enough to peek inside. He looked upon it as a piece of art, or an antique to be treasured. I once placed a doll in it and pronounced it dead. He insisted I remove it. “It’s not a toy, so don’t treat it like one.”

The card tables were set up in the center of the room, covered by starched white tablecloths and napkins, which offset the good china and silver laid out to perfection. Brand-new packs of bridge cards, score pads, and jeweled pencils sat ready on each of the card tables. The ladies brimmed with excitement at the prospect of an afternoon filled with food, bridge, and gossip.

I spied on the women from the kitchen; the doorway offered a clear view of their manicured hands already fingering the glass bowls filled with Bridge Mix. The chatter began and would not cease for hours. I heard the china clinking and the silver clanging in concert with the women’s voices, while Belle swished around as efficiently as a worker bee. The dining room began to smell like a restaurant, thick with food, perfume, and—wait. What was that scent that cut through? Mothballs.

“Belle, one of those ladies in there smells like mothballs. I think it’s Mrs. Appleton.”

Belle gave me a rapid-fire piece of her mind. “Hush up, that’s not polite. Maybe she does. I don’t cares if she smells like a pair of nasty ole boots. She mightn’t gets out much. This might be a real treat for her. You be nice, ya hear?”

Duly chastised, I watched as the ladies demolished the last of the celery sticks stuffed with pimento cheese and moved on to the next course.

“Mmm. Delicious! Why, Lily Tate, this is the best congealed salad I have ever had. Does it have a name?”

Everyone called my mother by both of her names. My father first among them. He addressed most people by their first and middle names, as if to remind them of their whole selves, a habit that seemed to cozy up nicely with our new territory. Jubilee’s old Southern aristocrats took pride in their family surnames and used them to clarify well-used first names about town: Mary Paige,
Mary LaRue, Mary Blythe; and no one thought it at all strange that one of my mother’s friends was called Mary Pillow.

“Oh, I don’t know what it’s called, Mary Daley, but I’m happy to pass on the recipe. I got it out of
Southern Living Classics
.”