The Undertaker's Daughter (2 page)

“Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I just have to have it.” Mary Daley’s deep drawl rose above the others.

“Colonel Leonidas L. Polk,” Mrs. Appleton announced.

Mrs. Eunice Appleton, a retired schoolteacher who regularly erupted with bits of information without explanation, enjoyed being coaxed.

“What about Colonel Polk, Eunice?” Becky Lou asked.

“Founder of the
Progressive Farmer
newspaper, 1886. Eventually became
Southern Living Classics
. Delicious salad, Lily Tate.”

My mother was genuinely grateful for the approval. Jubilee represented a fresh start in a new town, a new business, and, I was to learn, a fresh start in her marriage. The flattery was nice, but relief was the primary emotion, because it was important to break ground in Jubilee’s society when your roots didn’t sprout from Beacon County soil. Bridge playing was serious social business. The ladder of acceptance was tall, and to climb it playing bridge ranked right up there after churchgoing and a spot of charity work. My mother knew nothing about the game until we moved to Jubilee. One of the women from our new church invited her to come along one day and watch a group play. She picked it up quickly and soon became a somewhat formidable player. I, too, would one day have to learn to make my way among the coteries of Jubilee society.

Belle wouldn’t let me help serve the food, but allowed me to collect the empty plates while she topped up the sweet iced tea in the crystal glasses, which she pronounced
chrishtal
. I sensed my mother holding her breath, waiting to see if I could manage the
task without spilling anything in the ladies’ laps, or saying something wildly inappropriate. At the last bridge party, I’d asked, “Isn’t it lucky that no one died yesterday?”—and my mother wanted to fall through the floor. But today I followed Belle’s instructions to the tee.

“Now you jest waltz in there and gives each of them ladies a big smile. Jest like it’s Christmas mornin’ and you gots everything on your extry long list.”

“May I take your plate, ma’am?” My cheeks almost burst with the plumpness of my smile.

Back in the kitchen, Belle wrapped up a plate of food in foil.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Mrs. Hargrove, she’s takin’ it home with her.”

“She have a dog or something?”

“No, she keeps skin and bones on her by jest eatin’ half of everything. Saves money, too.”

“Is that polite, Belle?”

“Not fer me to say. It’s jest the way she is. Yer mama says she does it ever’where she goes. They sees Mrs. Hargrove a'comin’, they gets out they’s foil.”

After lunch the first progression of bridge began. I was no longer welcome in the dining room and Belle shooed me out of the kitchen. But our big old house was so full of doors and stairways and nooks and crannies that I was able to race down the stairs, run around the outside of the house to the front entrance of the funeral home, and sneak up the front staircase. The dining room where the ladies played was sandwiched between the living room and the kitchen, which provided two perfect aspects from which to spy. I tiptoed into the living room, and listened undetected to the conversation next door.

After the opening bid, the harmless talk of children,
church, and school trickled back and forth between the tables. These women were adept, the cards an extension of their fingers. They chattered like a tree full of birds as they played their hands, yet remained watchful as the game unfolded before them.

“Have ya’ll been busy, Lily Tate?” asked Mary Daley.

“Fairly. We buried Mr. Jessup last week.”

“I stopped by for visitation,” said Becky Lou. “Frank sure did a nice job on him.”

“He was a very . . . large man,” said my mother. “His casket was specially made.”

Snap, snap, snap. The sound of the cards hitting the tables merged with their voices.

Then, Becky Lou tossed out a concept I knew I would never learn in school: “People from The North don’t play like we do.”

“Why, what do you mean?” asked Pearline, the group’s newest player.

“They have different rules.”

“Good God A’mighty, that’s an understatement if I ever heard one,” piped up Mary Daley.

“They don’t bid like we do and they question everything,” Becky Lou said. “They go on all day with ‘What does this mean, what does that mean? We don’t play this way where we’re from.’ Lord, it felt like she was accusing us of cheating.”

“Good heavens. Where’s the poor thing from?” asked Pearline.

“Ohio.” Becky Lou paused for emphasis. “There’s
nothing
Southern about
her
.”

“That is the truest thing I ever did hear. When you cross the Ohio River, it’s just a different world, now I mean to tell you it is.” This from my mother.

Mmm-hmm
s all around the room.

“They were talking about the Ohio.” Mrs. Appleton came alive again.

“Who was, Eunice?” asked Mrs. Hargrove.

“The expression
sold down the river
originated from the mouths of Kentucky slaves. They rode the Ohio River further south to the plantations when they were sold on.”

“Thank you, Eunice,” the chorus patiently replied.

By the second progression, a palpable tension entered the room. When Pearline excused herself to the restroom, each woman leaned into the center of her table as Becky Lou, Pearline’s current bridge partner, vented her frustration amid the shuffling of the next hand.

“For heaven’s sake. You’d think anyone could count to fourteen. Why did she bid so low? She always does that.” Becky Lou’s temper could be as flammable as her hair.

It was truer than the truth that Pearline was a terrible bridge player. She’d learned nothing from Mr. Ferco’s evening bridge class out at the high school. Each time Pearline placed her cards down at the end of a hand, Becky Lou bit her fuchsia-painted lip.

But the real trouble wasn’t the bid, or the count, or even Mr. Ferco’s inability to teach the game of bridge to Jubilee women. No, the real reason for the seething atmosphere between these two women was their husbands. The beauty-parlor prattle was that something had happened between Mr. Farmer and Mr. Peyton. No one knows what it was, but rumor had it that one owed the other money, and it all blew up, and the result was an obvious coolness between Becky Lou and Pearline.

When Pearline sat down again and arranged her swishy skirt, Becky Lou quickly changed the subject. “I can’t wait for Belle’s pecan pie. It’s better than my own mama’s. Isn’t it the most marvelous pie you ever tasted?”

“Mmm-hmm,” everyone agreed. More shuffling.

The rich, dark smell of freshly brewed coffee and the resumed clatter of dishes meant one thing: Time for dessert. Down the steps I tiptoed and bumped into my father. He was familiar with my detective routine and laughed as I made my way out the door and around the house again.

I avoided a near collision in the kitchen with Belle as she balanced a gigantic tray of cups and saucers and a steaming silver coffeepot. The phones were ringing off the wall, but the bridge party was in the clear now. We could get a truckload of bodies and it wouldn’t disrupt the third progression, no, sir. As my father would say—play on, ladies, play on.

After the voracious eight swooned over Belle’s gooey pecan pie and stained the coffee cups with their lipstick, Belle finally gave me some food. I was starving after being subjected to the cruelty of two hours of heaping plates that drifted past me. I wasn’t allowed bridge-party food, but instead quietly enjoyed a cheese sandwich and was deep into a bowl of soup when I heard Mary Daley clear her throat.

“You will never believe what Sophie May told me.”

Immediate silence. Mary Daley’s maid was the equivalent of a news editor who reported only the best kind of gossip. Positioned near the open kitchen doorway, I had only a thin wall between the ladies and me. I felt as if I were sitting right next to them.

“You know those parties the doctors and lawyers throw in the big house out there on the Sugar Lick Road? Well, Sophie May said that . . . well, you know, that the husbands and wives got . . . mixed up.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake. What are you talkin’ about?” asked Becky Lou.

“Well, you know . . .” She couldn’t quite get it out.

“Now, Mary Daley, this is not the time to be—”

“Wife swapping,” Mrs. Appleton perked up. “That’s what she’s sayin’.”

Audible gasps.

“What?”

“Not in Jubilee!”

“No. I don’t believe it. Sophie May made that up.”

“Sophie May has been working for me for over twenty years and she does not make up stories,” Mary Daley said. “She used to work at those parties. She told me they think the coloreds are invisible and don’t hear, think, or speak. Those country-club people aren’t a bit worried about the talk. Every one of you knows how they are. Sophie May said that Dr. Benson was on top of Peg Carlton so quick it would make your head spin.”

Belle came toward me like a rushing wind and slapped her hands over my ears.

I squirmed out of her reach. “Belle, what’s wife swatting?” I whispered.

“You better git yerself out of here right now.” She chased me out of the kitchen with a serving spoon.

“But I haven’t had any pie yet.”

“Go on, now. Don’t be comin’ back in this kitchen for the rest of the day. You gots no business in here listenin’ to them ladies. They’s adults, and you ain’t, so you best be gittin’ to yer room and play or read one of yer books. Lawd knows you gots plenty of things to do ’sides sittin’ in here spyin’ on yer mama’s friends. Lawd, lawd, lawd. I never
seen
such a nosy child.”

Like a disturbed hen, she clucked back to the kitchen.

I left as Belle asked, but I didn’t go to my room. The floor in the laundry room felt cool. I rested my back against the paneled wall and listened to Belle washing the dishes. The ladies’ voices
added a faint song above the hiss of the running water as it hit the porcelain sink. There I stayed, cross-legged on the floor, until the group broke up and one by one descended the stairs. I often gave the appearance of obeying, when in reality I found ways to skirt the rules. I learned that to live in an environment that cared for the needs of a constant flow of people—both living and dead—it was necessary to steal an ounce of personal freedom wherever and whenever I found it.

 CHAPTER 1 

O
ne of the opening shots of my family’s 8 mm home movies was of massive funereal flower arrangements, flowers so plentiful and so flawlessly arranged that they did not look real. The camera slowly panned over a casket in which a young woman lay in perfect stillness. I’ll never forget how she looked. Her coal-black hair spread over a white satin pillow; her lips, painted a bright cherry red, contrasted brazenly with her gypsumlike skin. She looked like the Disney version of Snow White, except that her thick, black glasses revealed the era of her death to be the 1950s, the grainy film already at least ten years old. Her glasses looked out of place—why did she need them now? She didn’t, but her family needed them. Their last memory of her required familiar and, therefore, comforting details. The first time I saw a close-up of her face, even with her eyes closed she looked so alive and vibrant that I asked, “Is she really dead, or were you all just fooling around?”

I have tried to remember the first time I saw a dead body. There have been many odd firsts in my life, like the first time I touched a dead person. I was too short to reach into the casket, so my father picked me up and I leaned in for that first empty, cold touch. It was thrilling because it was an unthinkable act. But I recall no first viewing because from the time I entered the world there were always dead bodies.

When I was old enough to understand what they meant, people told me they felt decidedly creepy about funeral homes. I knew a woman who always ran to the other side of the street whenever she happened upon ours. She gave a little shudder when she saw me seated in the swing on the veranda. I nodded to her and remained silent, having no need to defend my position, and anyway, sooner or later she, too . . . But I could understand how one would think it a bit unnatural to spend day after day, year after year, entertaining the grieving and caring for their dead.