Final Arrangements (12 page)

It was a flawless stage set. There was no
sense of urgency, or any impression of the behind the scenes
workings of an industry which devoted itself to disposing of those
who no longer required the use of their mortal coil and had
therefore shuffled it off on their way to other more pressing
domains.

"This place looks like the set from Gone With
The Wind," Stretch said, referring to the white columns and general
antebellum look of things.

"Oh Stretch," she said, taking his big rough
hand into her own. "What a perfect place to be dead." Which was
when the breakdown finally came. With great, gulping sobs, Shannon
made her way to the wide, sweeping porch. The rush of grief, heat,
and confusion seemed at first limitless, as though she was nothing
more than a conduit for these passions, which had as their source
all the stored up grief of the entire membership of the human race.
But gradually, the feelings began to subside, the wellspring of
emotion ceased to pump forth its sorrowful energies, and there fell
over her a kind of peace, a blessed numbing of her mind and body.
Through it all, Stretch sat beside her, saying nothing, simply
putting his arm around her shoulder, letting her know she was not
alone.

"I guess that was long overdue," she said.
"The night Dad died, I couldn't cry. Now look at me, I need a
Kleenex. My face is a wreck!"

With an easy gesture, Stretch produced a
handkerchief. A very clean one, starched and pressed. Not something
she would have expected him to have. It was turning out the man had
a lot of things she wasn't expecting. Big things and little
things.

She began to dab at her eyes, thankful she'd
only applied a light amount of makeup that morning. "I don't dare
take out a mirror," she said.

"You're beautiful, even when you cry," he
said.

"You're a dream, Stretch. I know you're not
real. That I'll wake up soon and this will all be over."

"I'm real."

"Sorry about the boo-hoo's just now."

"No need."

"It was like everything inside me was dusty
and dry. Or like I'd swallowed a basketball and it was blocking
everything deep inside me from getting out. When we arrived here,
it became very real to me that we would be burying not only my dad,
but my mother as well. That's when the tears finally came, I guess.
The thought of their two graves, side by side. Buried together in
California, a place neither of them came from. Like they are being
buried in a foreign land. It makes me feel so lonely. So small, and
powerless. My parents were the center of my life for so many years
... and now they're ... gone. The center of my life is gone.
Everything I've been pursuing, everything I've wanted in my life
suddenly seems so shallow. Stretch? Death is ... wrong. So very
wrong. No matter what the preachers say about it."

"Death is terrible," he said.

"And how."

Stretch removed his hand from around her
shoulder and kissed her lightly on top of her head. "I think Joe
and Martha are going to like it here," he said.

"After we're married," she said, "we'll visit
them often."

"Yes."

"Stretch?"

"Hmmm?"

"Did you hear what I just said."

"Yes."

"I just said the M-word."

"I know. Has a beautiful ring to it, don't
you think?" They had reached the main entrance, but hesitated
there, this more urgent matter pressing in on them.

"I've only known you for such a short
time."

"True."

"It was a silly thing to say to you, Stretch.
It popped out of my mouth by accident. I'm sorry. I'm feeling so
... I don't know what. Sort of wild. What with all that's happened
today. When I took your hand just now, suddenly I had a feeling
that I was connected to something greater than myself. Like all of
a sudden from out of nowhere, there was this sensation that if the
two of us were married, it would be the most natural thing in the
world. I'm saying things, but I don't know if I'm saying it, or
somebody else is saying it."

"Gosh," he said.

"That's all you've got to say about it?
Gosh?"

"I ... yes. Gosh. Gosh, gosh, gosh,
gosh."

"Stretch Murphy, what is happening here?"

"Here?"

"Yes. To us. Right here on this spot. In
front of the door to the undertaker's parlor. There is something
going on. We're being prodded, stirred to action in some strange
way. I just said we were going to be married. Now that wasn't my
idea at all. It came from someplace beyond myself. It had to have.
Because we hardly know one another. That's all the time we've spent
together on this planet. Six short hours. Actually less, if you
count the couple of hours when I went to the airport. So make that
four hours."

"The words of your mouth came from God,"
Stretch replied. "And the time frame of six hours, or four hours,
means nothing. Because it's an arranged marriage. Our knowing one
another personally is far less important than our commitment to
establish and keep a Christian marriage, where each reveres the
other as better than themselves."

"This whole thing. I want to believe it, but
it's hard to accept."

"Is it? Did you know most marriages in other
parts of the world are still arranged by the parents? Exactly the
way it's been done since Biblical times?"

"That's all very well and good for them,"
Shannon said. "That whole agrarian village lifestyle thing. Where
people never travel more than five miles from home their entire
lives. But even for them it's disappearing. The ones who can are
moving to New York to drive cabs. I don't know. I feel a surge of
excitement and then I'm flooded with doubt."

"I know, Shannon," he said. "But just think,
it wasn't until this century people got hung up on having their
marriage partner be a personal choice instead of a family decision.
And look at what a disaster it's been. Did you know the main cause
of divorce today is problems with the in-laws? Because we've lost
respect for our mothers and fathers. We no longer consider them in
authority over us. So when people get married, getting along with
the families is optional, and it turns into a squabble from the get
go. But that rarely happens when the two families arrange the
marriage."

"I never thought I'd say this," Shannon said.
"But the longer I'm around you, the more reasonable the whole thing
sounds. Even though at the same time its seems patently
absurd."

"You'll see," Stretch said. "Your dad and my
parents were right. They somehow knew you and I would be good
together. There's just one problem."

"And that is?"

"I ... hate to have to tell you this. It's
very awkward."

Here it comes
, she thought. I knew it.
I really and truly knew it. And what a fool I've been. Flirting
with this dangerous idea, trying it on for size as though it was
something I was actually capable of buying in to. This guy is some
kind of a jerk who gets a cheap thrill pitching his hokey line to
perfect strangers just to see if they'll bite. And when they do, as
I just now appeared to have done, he drops them. Drops them hard,
just to watch them fall. If he says what I think he's going to say
next, I will experience the most humiliating moment of my life.
He's already married. Or recently divorced with five kids. Or has a
disease. What was I thinking?

"Wait," she said to him. "I don't want to
hear whatever it is you were planning to say next. In fact, I want
you to leave."

"Leave?"

"Just get in your car and go."

"But you never let me tell you what the
problem was."

"Because I don't care. I've got enough
problems as it is. And you're taking this entire discussion we've
been having way too seriously. The truth is, if anything, I've been
a victim of temporary insanity caused by all the going's on
today."

He grinned, one she hadn't seen before, his
left eye slightly closed, giving his face a lopsided, goofy
appearance."

"I get it," he said. "You're scared, aren't
you. You think I was about to dump you. Or have an intractable
virus or something."

"Get real. You can't dump what you don't
have."

"I wasn't going to. But there is a problem
you should know about."

"Stretch, I--"

"--If I decide to go to seminary, I don't
think we should be married until I get established. So I'd have to
ask you to wait for me. Which would be a huge request, and one I
couldn't reasonably expect you to say yes to. But if you did agree
to wait for me, I promise I'd wait for you."

"That's it? That's your big confession?"

"Yes."

"You are completely out of your mind. Okay,
Stretch. After all we have just discussed, I can't believe you
actually said what you just said. Not that we are going to marry
one another. I'm talking only hypothetically here. But may I ask
why you can't get married if you decide to go to bible school?"

"Because I don't believe in birth
control."

"Say again?"

"I don't believe in birth control. I believe
that a Christian marriage must be open to the transmission of life.
So as not to repudiate or degrade the natural gifts of the man and
woman."

"That's a bizarre way to put it. You're
talking about having kids, right?"

"Yes. Which means that if I decide to study
to be a pastor, I'll be too busy to have children. Too busy
studying to properly father them."

She looked around her. Was there anybody
around who could rescue her from this lunacy? There were a few
other persons about, including an old Japanese gardener fiddling
with a rose bush, and, oddly, a couple of teenagers holding hands,
talking in whispers at the other end of the enormous porch. None of
them, she was certain, if asked to guess for a thousand years,
would have been able to come up with the present conversational
path she and Stretch had embarked on.

"Where do you get off telling me about your
views on birth control?"

"Sorry. Sometimes I blurt things out when I
shouldn't."

"It so happens, I don't particularly believe
in it either," she replied. "I certainly don't believe in
pre-marital sex. But I don't have it tattooed on my forehead so
everybody knows what I think."

"But it's important for you to know my
beliefs. Because I believe the number of children a couple has
should be decided by God, not by a pharmaceutical company."

"Stretch, we're playing make-believe. Trying
on something to see if it fits. Right now, we're like two little
kids wearing their parents' clothes. We are acting ridiculous. And
it bothers me that you seem to be taking this so seriously."

"Shannon, what if I told you I loved
you?"

The words were soft in the air against the
laughter of the teenagers on the other side of the fountain. Yet
soft as they were, she could feel the power of them, as though the
earth itself was in sympathetic vibration and was even now rocking
slightly under her feet. No. Wait. The earth was rocking.

"Stretch? Do you feel the ground moving?"

He nodded in the affirmative and for a moment
they froze, as did all Angelenos when they felt the first stirrings
of a tremor. The unasked questions percolated up through the
bedrock of their gut level instincts.
Will it get any stronger?
Is this the beginning of the end? Will the ground open at my feet
and swallow me whole?
The tremor subsided, duly noted and
recorded by all present, as well as a great many scientists not
present, the thing dismissed as simply one more of thousands of
similar shakings lifetime L.A. residents had experienced.

"Earthquake," he said. "Rolling toward us
from the east. Maybe a 3 or 4 on the scale. Epicenter someplace far
away, like maybe Joshua Tree national park, or the mountains around
Lake Arrowhead."

"Did you see the columns swaying? I always
feel a little woozy when we have one of these things."

"We were talking about love," Stretch said.
"And the ground moved under our feet."

"You didn't say you loved me," she said. "You
were simply posing the possibility of you saying so."

"But the earth actually moved. It's a sign
from God. Perhaps I should say it."

"What good would it do? It couldn't possibly
be true."

"Why not?"

"Because you've only known me less than a
day. Love takes time. And besides, according to your theory, an
arranged marriage has nothing to do with love."

"I love you, Shannon," he said. "There. I
said it. No matter how foolish it makes me look. No matter how
strange I may seem. Since I met you this morning, my entire life
has changed."

"You love me as a Christian sister in the
Lord," she said.

"No. The other kind of love."

His words tumbled into her, into a vacant
spot which, until he said them, she hadn't known even existed. That
the blank spot existed, and that it had now been filled with some
sort of indefinable substance was a new thing, one she wasn't ready
to face on any level whatsoever.

"We're here to bury my father," she said.

"Yes. We should go in. It's already after 2
o'clock."

"Before we go in, tell me one thing."

"Okay."

"Stretch, if I said I couldn't wait to marry
you, if I asked you not to choose divinity school, what would you
do?"

"I ... I'm not sure. I guess I'd have to pray
about it. Or talk to my pastor."

"You wouldn't simply give in to my wishes as
your potential future arranged spouse?"

"Shannon ... it's not that ... it's ...
it's--

"--Never mind," Shannon said. "Because I'm
not going to ask you. Not now, not ever. Now take me by the elbow
and let's go inside and get to work."

"Wait. We should finish this."

"It's finished. You balked. That was your
answer. Deal with it. Now let's go."