The Funeral Makers (13 page)

“Hell, it ain't like I got a bushel to pick from. If you was to put on a beauty contest here in Mattagash, you'd have to ship in contestants from other towns.”

—Chester Gifford, of His

Preoccupation with Amy Joy, 1959

In the candlelight Chester Lee Gifford studied the lineup of new Plymouths on the advertisement page that Homer's Car Sales had placed in the
Watertown
Weekly
. The 1960 models were already on sale and looked as delicious as forbidden fruit. Chester Lee traced the shape of one with his index finger. He could almost feel the smooth body come through the newspaper. There was something about the warmth of a car after it had been sitting all day in the sun, a heat that went through his hand and up his arm until he felt he was part of the car, like an extra aerial or a curb feeler. Even a woman sunbathing all day in cotton panties could not give off that kind of heat. And a car was so indifferent. So cool. Like a cat. Cars weren't stupid. They were very, very smart. Women you could push forever. All except Margaret O'Brian, who had hanged herself after Willie was hit by lightning. “Used to a beating and no one to give it to her,” Chester Lee mumbled. A car would never do that. Cars just didn't care.

There was no doubt about it, he
understood
cars, and yet it seemed that he was doomed to be a pedestrian for the rest of his life, watching all the world cruise by. He felt a warm tingle in his genitals and touched them. Just the thought of owning a car could do that to him quicker than any woman could. Chester Lee closed his eyes and imagined his hands on the wheel of one of Homer's new 1960 Plymouths. The dark blue one. He would put a handmade mat in the back window of pink carnations made from bathroom tissue. The kind the women's auxiliary made for Legion members. He'd add some yellow flames down each door. A big set of foam rubber dice dangling from the rearview mirror. A fancy broad from Watertown, with big breasts crammed into a tight pink sweater, sitting next to him in the front seat. You could take your pick of any broad when you had a hot car. And the backseat, all soft and cushiony. There was no better place on earth to screw a woman.

Chester heard faint footfalls on the floor overhead. No one but Amy Joy knew about his hideout in the basement. He zipped his pants up and crept softly to the bottom of the stairs and listened. It wasn't a man. The steps were too light and springy. It must be Amy Joy. He had told her never to come there without his permission, but she had come at a good time. He could always take her on the cot and pretend that beneath them was the warm vinyl of the Plymouth's backseat. It was better than being alone.

“Amy Joy, I'm down here,” he shouted up the stairs and then went back to his cot. The footfalls inched their way slowly down the creaking steps and stopped at the bottom. Chester had gone back to the advertisement page. He quickly forgot about the dark blue Plymouth when he heard Sicily say, “Chester Lee, it's time we had a little talk.” He bolted upright on the bed and flung the papers fluttering to the floor.

“How did you find me?” he asked, unable to look at her. Giffords rarely looked the rest of mankind in the eye.

“I heard you whispering about it to Amy Joy the other night.”

“I'll have to move,” he told himself, wishing there were some underground caverns he could swim to, like Jesse James had done. He was just starting to feel at home in the basement of the old building. He especially liked the quiet, as compared to the Gifford outhouse. And since no sheriff had come poking around after the traveling grocery truck robbery, he felt quite sure it was law-proof.

“I don't want any bad words or anything like that,” Sicily assured him. “I hope we can work this out like two decent people.” She realized this might prove difficult, considering one of those people was a Gifford.

“Work what out?” he asked her.

“You know what. I want you to leave Amy Joy alone. She's only a child. Stick to women your own age.”

“Women your own age,” he thought. How old could Sicily be? Fortysomething. He was thirty-two. That was pretty near his own age. He looked at Amy Joy's mother closely, with new interest. It was one of two things: She would either be easier to get than her daughter or harder. It was always one extreme or the other.

“I don't want Amy Joy, although she's a very nice little girl.”

“You seem to.”

Chester Lee poured himself some of his wine-whiskey and pointed to the extra tin cup that sat next to the bottle.

“Want some?”

“I didn't come to drink with you, Chester,” said Sicily. She felt suddenly exhausted, tired of all the battles, fearful of the funeral still to come. She had had very little sleep for the past two nights, one waiting up for Ed to come home, the other worrying over where he'd been the night before. Her marriage was stretched to the limit. She felt something was about to happen, but divorce wasn't the answer. That would scandalize the family. Mattagash could accept a marriage that didn't work out as long as nothing was done about it. But
change
seemed to be the one thing that no one in town could tolerate. Yet the McKinnons had always been the style setters, the fashion makers. Sicily knew that if she got a divorce almost every other woman in Mattagash would want one too. She didn't relish that kind of social pressure.

“Could I talk to you?” Chester asked, his head down, staring sadly into his glass of wine.

“About?”

“Something that really hurts me. Something I never told no one before.”

“I don't know if I want to hear it.” Sicily leaned against the wall, perplexed. She had never thought much about the human side of Chester Gifford. Now, in the dim light of his candles, he looked almost boyish.

“Is it still daylight upstairs?” he asked her.

“Of course. It's only suppertime. But it's raining.”

“Sometimes I think there's been a bomb dropped and everything and everyone is gone. Blown to smithereens, and I go up and stick my head out the door just to if it's all there. I never know down here. I just light the candles and I lay on my bed and think, and I never know.”

“Why don't you go up where there's light and get a job like everyone else? You're no better than a mole down here.” As Sicily moved away from the wall, she noticed a small black spider inching its way down a strand hanging above her head.

“You don't like me because I'm a Gifford. I can't get a good job because I'm a Gifford. Everyone says I'll just up and quit. That gets to preying on your mind when you're trying to put in a good day's work. Finally, you just throw it in. Why disappoint a whole town? And I don't want to cut pulp like everyone else does, anyway. I want to be different.”

“Well, you're different, all right.”

Chester Lee put his head in his hands and held it, like it wasn't his head but a ball someone had thrown him and he was forced to catch it. He waved one hand to Sicily, a signal that it was too painful to go on. She came to the cot and sat on it, brushing what looked like half a moldy biscuit to the floor. The right words were hard to find. She really had judged Chester for his family name. That wasn't what Christians were supposed to do. What if Jesus came to her door, looking like a Gifford? Would she have turned him away?

“I've got no one to talk to,” Chester Lee said and picked up his wine. “Will you hold this for a second?” he asked, and Sicily took the cup from his hand so that he could blow his nose. He stuffed the hankie back in his pocket, a custom of all the men in Mattagash and one that she hated. Seeing it done had always made her weak in the knees. Once Farley Baker had taken his hankie from his pocket at Blanche's grocery, right near Sicily's face. Before she could turn away, he had blocked off one nostril with his index finger to build up pressure in the nasal passage and then snorted like a bull into his handkerchief. It was so obscene that Sicily found it necessary to drop down on one of Blanche's fifty-pound sacks of Robin Hood flour to let the nausea pass. Some men working in the woods, or simply caught without the accouterment, did the same as Farley, except without the handkerchief, aiming for the ground then snapping away any residue with thumb and finger. Other men raised it to the level of high art, jerking their heads, one foot placed firmly ahead of the other.

“What's botherin' you?” she asked. He did look upset, and she could see that, in truth, Chester Lee Gifford was an attractive man. “He looks a little like Eddie Fisher with a mustache,” she thought.

“It's kind of a love story,” he said and poured wine in the other cup.

“This is your wine here.”

“A love story about someone you know very well. Someone who is doomed because of his love,” he said and drank some wine from the second cup.

“Who?” Sicily was interested. She took a sip of wine. Chester Lee almost smiled. He knew the best way to get a Christian woman was to let her think there was a real-life parable floating around that she hadn't heard.

“Someone who lives in Mattagash. Always has.”

Sicily drank a bit more wine, her face puckering from the taste.

“What makes me so sad. What makes me not keep a job is that I've loved someone all my life and she married another man.” The candles flickered. The room hushed. The mice were asleep. It was only Sicily and Chester Lee and a gallon of wine-whiskey imported from the vineyards of northern Maine. He could feel the electricity about to snap in the air around them.

“And I know her?” Sicily finally asked. The wine didn't taste all that bad. She'd just finish off that one cup. A glass of wine or beer now and then was good for the soul.

“She's a few years older than me. I used to watch her when I was a boy, and I'd tell myself that when I grew up, we'd get married. But by the time I got old enough she'd already married someone else.”

“How sad,” said Sicily.

“You're the only living soul who knows, so don't tell.”

“I promise,” she said, “but who is she?”

“You know how I been over talking to Amy Joy and you been mad about it?”

“Mad ain't the word.”

“Well, I go over and talk to Amy Joy so I can be near the woman I've always loved.”

Sicily thought about this. She drank the rest of her cup of wine. Marge? Surely not.

“I've loved you all my life,” he said, realizing she had missed his point. “Watched you. I think you're beautiful.”

“That's enough,” said Sicily and stood up. “I'm a decent married woman and I'll thank you to watch what you say around me.”

“You used to wear a blue dress that swished when you walked by, your little nose up in the air. I thought you looked like a real princess.”

Sicily put her empty cup on the barrel. She felt a bit giddy. She must have stood up too quickly. She put a hand against the wall as she cautiously climbed the stairs.

Chester heard her feet walking across the upstairs floor. He didn't mind giving a woman the right to be insulted, or the time it took to clear the air as to who was a whore and who wasn't. He would know in a matter of seconds if he had succeeded. He picked up the page of Plymouths again and waited. He heard the same small footfalls cross the floor above his head. Soft as petals dropping. Soft as Jesus walking on water. They paused at the head of the stairs. Chester pushed his paper under the cot and quickly filled both cups with wine.

“A Plymouth wouldn't be that stupid,” he thought.

Sicily came unsteadily down the stairs. At the bottom she stopped.

“I didn't come back because of what you said. I came to tell you to let Amy Joy be.”

“You don't have to worry none about that. It was only to see you anyway.”

“I'm years older than you. I would've thought I was already married when you were barely born.”

Sicily had tried, upstairs, to calculate the date of when she was married against how old Chester Lee must be, to see if there was any truth in what he said. But she had been so distraught lately with Ed and Amy Joy and Marge, and now this. And mathematics had never been her long suit. The numbers had tumbled over each other and were lost. Only the poetry, ageless, classless, had remained.

“Did it have a narrow white belt?” she asked him.

“Did what?”

“That blue dress. Did it have a white belt and two pleats down the sides?”

“Your waist looked as tiny as that,” said Chester Lee and made an O with his thumb and forefinger.

“I bought that on sale at Penney's. I'd almost forgotten it,” said Sicily and sat on the cot.

“There were nice memories in the old days,” she said. She was relieved to talk to someone, especially a man. Men were strong and had heavy arms that could wrap around you until you felt safe. Sicily hadn't felt safe in years and every autumn brought more uncertainty. Some nights she would wake up from a troubled dream and run to the closet to see if Ed's clothing was still there, his suitcase still under the bed. The past few weeks had convinced her he was planning to leave. She'd heard of husbands running off to foreign countries like that and never coming back. Just as her own father had done. It was like a big map of all those exotic places had folded up and swallowed them. They were somewhere in the world and the world was too big to go hunting for them. The thought of Ed abandoning her to the gossips of Mattagash was a chilling prospect.

“I don't think you're happy,” Chester Lee said.

“You can tell?”

“Sometimes I think I know how you feel every minute of the day.”

“You do?”

“Because I love you.”

“Do you think I'm still pretty?”

“Beautiful. Like a picture. Prettier than the girls in the catalog.”

Sicily sipped on her wine. Why couldn't these words have ever come from Ed's lips? If they had, maybe she would have been more like the woman he wanted. Maybe she would have been more like the women he went to when the screen door slammed behind him all those nights and she listened to his car drive away. Women who had no names, no faces, no addresses, but she knew they were there, could even tell when he'd tired of one and went on to another. Women who hovered about her marriage like ghosts she would never see.