The Funeral Makers (2 page)

“Who wants to cook and sew?” Amy Joy asked and turned on the radio Marge had won by punching the lucky name “Perry” on someone's ticket board. “‘Life gets cold and empty, when your self-respect has died.'” Amy Joy danced along to the music. “‘What does it take to keep a woman like you satisfied?'”

Sicily turned the radio off. “Now you listen to me, little girl. Have you been seeing Chester Gifford?”

“I guess,” said Amy Joy.

“You guess what? Have you or haven't you?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Sicily sank into a chair at the kitchen table. Amy Joy snapped one last meager bubble, then tossed the dying gum into the trash can at the end of the stove.

“What's wrong with Chester?”

Sicily removed more tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. She cleared her throat for the second time that night.

“Amy Joy, you are my only daughter. And you are only fourteen. You're a baby. I thought God gave you to me as a blessing in my old age, but I swear, it's getting harder and harder to think of you as a blessing.” Sicily looked at the floor as she spoke. Finally, she chose a time to look directly at Amy Joy, who was leaning against the refrigerator. A piece of tissue spotted with blood was stuck to the ravaged area of skin.

“Take that bloody rag off your face while I'm talking to you.”

“It's bleeding, Mama,” said Amy Joy, and returned to the mirror to dab at the small volcano.

“
Well, don't pick it then
,” said Sicily, raising her voice. This was something she hated to do. Marge was famous for voice-raising and Sicily was determined to pave roads of her own.

“Your friend Chester Gifford is at least thirty years old if he's a day. And not to mention the fact that he's been in trouble with the law a dozen times. You are barely fourteen years old, young lady, and he's a full-grown man with a mustache.”

“Oh, Mama.” Amy Joy was now inspecting the damage done to the seam in her pants.

“‘Oh, Mama' what?”

“Haven't you ever been young?” Amy Joy pulled a thread and it snapped.

“Yes, I
have
been young, but I don't think Chester Gifford ever was. That man was in trouble when he was a toddler.”

Amy Joy took two slices of bread from the bread box and popped them into the toaster. She found some homemade rhubarb sauce in the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. She poured it directly from the jar to her plate, then licked the drippage with her tongue. She waited for the toast.

“I don't believe it,” said Sicily. “I don't believe you would resort to that fattening stuff after our mother-daughter talk the other day about diets.”

The toast popped, Amy Joy buttered each slice, then spooned rhubarb onto one. She bit into the combination.

“All right, Amy Joy,” said Sicily, putting on her sweater and shouldering the strap of her purse. She pointed to Marge's room.

“I've got a sister in that room dying of beriberi. And I leave you here to see to her last needs, and instead you're gadding about the backyard with Chester Gifford.”

Amy Joy finished the first toast and smeared the second with rhubarb.

“Let me tell you how things stand.” Sicily had found her car keys and was twirling them in her right hand, like they were an oriental weapon. “If you so much as glance at Chester Gifford again, your father will hear of it. And you know what that means, don't you?”

“Yeah,” said Amy Joy.

Sicily opened the front door. She had the evening paper in her hand to take home and read after a long soak in the tub. Before she closed the door behind her, she looked back at Amy Joy, who had pulled the soggy tissue from her face and was trying to shake it from her fingers and into the trash can.

“If you spoil this funeral for me, Amy Joy Lawler, I will no longer be your mother. Do you understand?”

“I guess,” said Amy Joy.

“I sincerely believe that the best decision I ever made in my life was the day I bought the Packard.”

—Junior to His Father, 1958

At fifty, Pearl McKinnon Ivy was the middle child of Ralph C. McKinnon's three daughters. She left home at the age of sixteen to attend the Portland School of Hair Styling in Portland, Maine. It was a long way from Mattagash, socially and geographically, and it was there that she met and became engaged to Marvin Ivy, a law student and aspiring politician. Pearl married him, thinking she had bagged a future lawyer, not to mention the possibilities of a governor or, when she dared to think of it, a president of the United States. But Marvin's acumen was not capable of carrying such a strict academic load, and he dropped out in his second year, before he flunked out. They had been married only five months and Pearl was eight weeks pregnant with their first child. She suffered a nervous breakdown the day Marvin came home and threw his expensive law books, one by one, into the incinerator in the basement. Standing on the stairs and watching what she felt was a deranged man and not a future president, Pearl said later that all she remembered was a faint buzzing, as though a swarm of bees had flown through her head. For two days, she insisted she had gone blind. That she could only see
black
. It was the first nervous breakdown to be recorded in the McKinnon family. At least Pearl
said
it was a nervous breakdown, and never moved from her bed for three months, except to go to the bathroom. The day that the community center burned down, she insisted that Marvin move her to a chair by the window. With her feet on a footstool, she spent the afternoon chain-smoking as she watched the commotion of fire trucks and ambulances. Marvin thought it would jolt her back into the joys of living, but that evening, after the crowd had dispersed and the foundation of the community center was a smoldering pile of water and ashes among the blackened sofas and chairs, Pearl asked to be helped back to bed. Marvin tried to talk sense into her. The night he came home with the news that he had finally made up his mind to join his father in the undertaking business, Pearl covered her ears and said, “That's the last straw. There's more bees than ever now. You've driven me crazy. Take me to Bangor right now and lock me up with that Holy Roller we read about, who threw his little baby off the bridge because God told him it could fly.”

After weeks of this, Marvin gave up. He had put his best foot forward by going to work for his father, who was the sole owner of Ivy Funeral Home. Certain that the business would one day be his, he soon forgot about law and poured his heart into embalming and burial. Suspecting another woman was the cause of his late nights away from home, Pearl soon abandoned her notions of neurological disorders and concentrated instead on a new nursery. Marvin Ivy Jr. was born healthy and sound, despite his mother's conviction that the shock of having married an undertaker instead of a president had damaged the unborn baby's nerve endings. He was their only child. The final blow to Pearl's self-esteem came when Marvin Sr. moved his family into the rooms above the funeral home, saying that not only would it save them money, but he would be closer to his work. Pearl would have divorced him then had it not been for the baby and the embarrassment of returning to Mattagash with neither a husband nor a hairstyling license. Instead, she went to plan B, knowing that if she lavished all her devotion on Marvin Jr. he would one day grow up to take her away from full caskets and sobbing women. But the plans she made during the many nights she sat up smoking cigarettes were squelched the day that Junior announced he was engaged to Thelma Parsons and would be the third generation of Ivys to partake in the funeral business. In her middle age Pearl was repaid for those years of motherly love when Junior stopped by to drop off his three undisciplined children for her to babysit. “Those kids could wake the dead,” Pearl once said to her husband, whose only reply was, “This would be the place to do it.”

When the phone call came from her baby sister Sicily, Pearl was not surprised.

“I smelled death in the air when I got up this morning,” she told Sicily.

“It might be coming from downstairs,” Sicily said in all innocence. Knowing this, Pearl let it pass.

“I just hope we get there before Marge passes on. But even if we don't, we'll at least make the funeral.”

“How about the others?” Sicily asked, wondering where she could put up Marvin Jr., his sniveling little wife, and those three heathens.

“Marvin Jr. was just talking about a camping trip with the kids last week. He's got himself one of them campers with everything you need that you pull behind the car.” Sicily felt a pure relief. She would offer to cook meals for them, but to house the entire group would have been catastrophic.

“And big Marvin and me will get us a nice motel room. At times like this one shouldn't think about money,” Pearl said. Despite its being a funeral home, it
was
the only self-owned business in the family.

“That should work out just fine,” said Sicily. She not only had to worry about getting the funeral off to a good start, she also had spent half the night worrying over Amy Joy's infatuation with Chester Gifford.

The Ivys made their plans. They would make the trip a family vacation, since they'd probably never have another chance while the children were still small. It would be an opportunity for the grandparents to get to know the children. For the mother-in-law to pass her years of household knowledge on to the daughter-in-law. For the son to talk man-to-man with his father about the Ivy Funeral Home and what kind of future the business could expect.

At nine o'clock the next morning, Marvin Jr. tooted the horn of his new green Packard outside the Ivy Funeral Home. Inside the mobile home, the Ivy children were nestled with a stack of comic books, crayons, paper, and their favorite toys.

“Now don't forget, Cynthia.” Thelma was at the door of the mobile home giving some last-minute instructions to the oldest child, a pudgy girl of ten with two stiff braids sticking out from the sides of her head and tipped with red ribbons. “If you get hungry, just make some marshmallow fluff and peanut butter sandwiches. And there's milk in that little cooler with the ice. Now keep the door locked from the inside so it won't open.”

The second-oldest child was a boy of nine, Marvin Randall III, known as Randy to his family and the boys in his class who weren't terrified of him. Randy began to wallop the youngest child on the top of her head with a SORRY! game. This was Regina Beth, seven years old, who lapsed into one of her usual breath-holding sessions. Thelma slapped Randy's hands, took the SORRY! game from him, and gave it to Regina Beth, who started breathing once again.

“Randy, if you act up on this trip, you won't get the new bicycle,” Thelma told him. “And Regina Beth, one of these days I'm going to let you hold your breath until your belly button pops open.”

“Mama, why can't I ride in the car with the grown-ups?” Cynthia Jane reached beneath her organdy dress and tugged at the crotch of her panties.

“Sissy, are you still chafed?” asked Thelma as she wiped Randy's nose. “Mama will get Daddy to stop for some cornstarch once we're on the road. In the meantime, don't scratch.”

Thelma gave the children the handwritten signs she had drawn up the night before. There were three of them and they said FOOD, BATHROOM, and FIRE.

“Why make a sign that says
fire
?” Marvin Jr. had asked.

“Mothers like to be safe,” Thelma said. “They feel better knowing that they've thought of everything when it comes to their children.”

Pearl and Marvin Sr. had two suitcases and an overnight case. Marvin Jr. opened the trunk and made room among his and Thelma's things.

“That's what's so nice about a Packard,” he told his father. “All that room.”

“Where did you put the children's things?” asked Pearl.

“There wasn't enough room in the Packard, so we put them in the camper,” said Thelma.

“There would have been plenty of room if you had just moved things about a bit,” said Marvin Jr., defending the Packard's reputation.

“You're sure we're no bother?” Pearl asked.

“No bother at all, Mother,” said Thelma. Ignoring Thelma, Pearl gave Marvin Jr. a quick kiss and said, “Thank you, son. You're a good boy.”

Thelma was put behind the wheel so that the men could repose in the backseat and discuss business. Pearl sat in front, but could not concentrate on Thelma's talk about the children and whether she and Marvin Jr. should try for another child. They were just an hour north of Portland, with seven more hours to go.

“Don't have another one,” said Pearl, thinking,
Oh, please, God.
“Three's enough.”

Then she turned in her seat to listen to the men. Marvin Sr. had brought along the bottle of scotch his son had given him for Christmas. It was a trip to relax, he told Marvin Jr. There was a time for temperance and a time for a drink or two. They drank the scotch from plastic tumblers. Pearl was afraid of her good ones being broken.

“Now as far as the funeral business goes,” Marvin Sr. said to Junior. “I think your Grandpa Ivy said it in a nutshell. He predicted that the funeral business would always make money because people can't accept death as the end of human life. They need to believe that we'll all survive it in some form.”

“Well, don't we, sir?” Marvin Jr. said to his father. “I mean, that sounds almost as if Grandpa Ivy didn't believe in God. And just knowing how pious Grandma was, well, it's hard to believe she'd allow that sort of thing.” Marvin Jr. and his father were silent for a few minutes, both rolling over in their minds the image of old man Ivy, who had died several years before of natural causes, leaving behind instructions for an immediate and simple burial. “I've had my fill of families gathered to see their loved ones planted. The fake tears. The fights over the estate. Squabbling over who rides in the car behind the hearse. I want it kept plain. I want it cheap and quick.”

Old man Ivy then requested that his son be the only family member present at his interment. It was a slap in the funereal face for the family, and especially Marvin, his only son, who really believed that the Ivy Funeral Home, that
any
funeral home, was a public institution and ranked along with churches and schools.

“The old man came over on the boat, son. He was still wet behind the ears. How would you feel if you come straight from Russia to a land of opportunity?”

Marvin Jr. was not capable of even simple juxtaposition, so he said honestly, “I can't imagine.” Marvin Sr. patted his leg.

“Of course you can't. You're an American, born and bred. So am I. So is Thelma and your mother there in the front seat.”

“And a McKinnon, too,” said Pearl, opening her side glass for a bit of air.

“The old man got off the boat, took one look around, and said to himself, ‘These people don't appreciate the good lives they got so they're probably scared as hell of death.' He opened himself a funeral business and the rest is history.”

“That old man was a Communist,” said Pearl. “And an atheist to boot.”

“He just didn't believe in the American way of life is all,” said Marvin Sr.

“Let's change the subject, dear.” Pearl turned to look into her husband's face so that he could see her roll her eyes over at Thelma. It wouldn't be good for Thelma, who was known as a chatterbox, to hear this private talk about shady family members. Their secrets would be all over Portland in a week, especially if Thelma should become first lady of the Ivy Funeral Home. Pearl could not visualize it. But that Marvin Jr. and Thelma wanted to inherit the family business was obvious even to the corpses.

“Dad, what was his
real
name?” asked Thelma, who often feigned interest in family matters in order to be included in the conversation.

“Eye-vee-so-vitch,” pronounced Marvin Sr.

“No, it wasn't,” said Pearl. “It was something like that, but different.”

“Eye-so-vitch?” asked Marvin Sr.

“No, but that's close,” said Pearl.

“Doesn't
anyone
know?” asked Junior.

“It's written down on some papers somewhere,” Pearl said, pleased that the conversation was finally up to par. But Marvin Sr. was not a drinker and the scotch had loosened him for the rest of the trip.

“The old man revolutionized the funeral business, son,” he told Marvin Jr., who was taking large sips to catch up to his father. They were a few miles north of Bangor and at the bottom of their third glass.

“It was your grandfather who first realized that you shouldn't bring the mourners in at the foot of the casket, because that way the first thing they see of their loved one is two nostrils. No one wants to remember a loved one that way, son. Don't forget that.”

Pearl turned in her seat to lead the conversation off on some other trail, and that's when she saw a sign held pell-mell in the window of the camper. It said BATHROOM. Thelma pulled into the next service station and saw to the children's needs.

The Packard continued northward. Marvin Sr. began his fourth scotch, which was an unheard-of indulgence for him. The ice cubes that Junior had taken from the cooler at the last stop clinked in his glass. For an hour Marvin Sr. lectured his family in the dos and don'ts of funeralology.

“Son, remember this, if you remember any lesson from life,” he said sadly to Junior, who had fallen asleep. “Working in the funeral business leaves you a marked man. People cringe at the sight of you. They even say your hands smell.”

“Mother?” Thelma glanced over to see if Pearl was listening. “Mother, I need to ask you this,” she said. “What do you say to friends when they make nasty remarks about your husband's occupation?”