The Vagabonds (5 page)

“I’m cognizant of that,” Bill Becker says. “Whenever you’re ready, my friends.”

Next he distributes three copies of a brochure of “Cremation Choices.” They can choose between an “Artistic Collection,” a “Hardwood Collection,” a “Contemporary Collection” or a “Bronze Collection”; they each are provided with color photographs and descriptions and dimensions. There’s a “Memento Series” with “Heirloom Jewelry” and “Personal Expressions” and a description of the two methods of “Personalization”; they can elect engraving of the actual urn or personalization through the use of brass plaques. The two methods allow for different type styles, and the plaques vary in size. They must decide if they prefer the urn or urns to receive a burial or placement in a columbarium urn niche, or if the three of them wish permanent possession of one or more containers of the decedent’s remains, or scattering. “I think we’ve been thinking of scattering,” says Joanna, and Claire says, “We have to decide . . .”

Bill Becker clears his throat. State law requires embalming, he says, if burial or cremation fails to take place within forty-eight hours of death. In this case, he continues, we couldn’t guarantee a timetable and have proceeded with embalming; the clock starts ticking, understand, from the time of death and you all were traveling to get here. So what we’ve done is mostly a matter of—well, the word is—prophylaxis, a minimum procedure, I’m telling you more than you may want to know, but if the body has a communicable infectious disease then state law requires embalming. She
didn’t
have, she
wouldn’t
have, says Claire. Of course not, no, Bill Becker says, I’m simply explaining a legal procedure, and perhaps you’d care to view her now, would you care to accompany me?

They do. They walk through a room full of caskets—wooden and metal and fiberglass caskets, plain and ornate, open and shut—and through a door he holds open for them to where their mother lies. This room is cold. Alice reposes on a table, arms at her side, and with a pink sheet folded underneath her neck.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” Bill Becker says. “I hope you agree this is how she should look.”

On the shelf behind the table sit a box of powder-free latex examination gloves, a box of polyethylene aprons, a box of masks; there are scissors, knives, razors and needles, there are boxes marked “Dodge Permaglo” and “Dodge Restorative.” In silence they inspect the body of their mother where she lies. What they feared would not be bearable is not in fact so hard to bear; she is manifestly
elsewhere,
dead, and David tells himself he’s looking at a statuette or photograph of who she was, a dress he doesn’t recognize and cheeks and neck improved upon with adult tinting cream. He nods; his sisters nod. Joanna shuts her eyes an instant and Claire shifts her weight on her feet. They have identified the decedent and back in the office of Bill Becker Jr. sign the authorization for cremation. The funeral director points to a line where all three must sign and to the statement
This is a legal document. It contains important provisions concerning cremation. Cremation Is Irreversible and Final—Read This Document Carefully Before Signing
and gives them a worksheet for the General Price List. They promise they will choose among the various options listed and be back in touch in the morning and say that they are grateful and shake his hand and leave.

Ice and plowed slush line the side of the road; the road itself is clear. He has forgotten, David says, how
early
it gets dark back here and how cold a winter afternoon can be. Then he looks at his sister Joanna—the exhaustion in her, the gray face—and ceases his talk about winter and the bitter chill of this part of the East; he turns on the Taurus headlights and maneuvers them past the rows of summer mansions and then the entrance to Skidmore and the less imposing houses—split-level, ramshackle,
lived
in—to where they turn up the driveway again and past the rotten elm . . .

Some things do stay the same. The picket fence still stands. The basketball hoop by the woodshed remains. Inside the kitchen it feels warm, and David checks the thermostat, remembering how often their mother would tell him to turn down the heat, or turn it up, or check downstairs to make certain the furnace was working. They remove their jackets and kick off the snow from their shoes.

“I promised I’d call Leah,” Joanna says, and Claire nods and says she has a cell phone and will call home too. David walks into the library—what they used to call the “library” though he can’t remember reading there, remembers jigsaw puzzles they would do: a Braque, a Mondrian, a series of haystacks by Monet—and studies the dust on the spines of the books. He pictures his mother upstairs, in her bed, and leafing through a magazine, or drinking tea, or lukewarm soup, and trying to make sense of what the doctors told her and trying to remember which pills she has taken already and which she needs to take. He imagines the hospice volunteer or maybe Gretchen Adams appearing in the bedroom first thing every morning and asking, always, how are we doing this morning, how are we feeling today? His mother always answers, “Fine,” and smiles, or tries to, and raises herself on the pillows and commences with the pills.

And then one day when they arrive and ask “How are you feeling?” she cannot answer, does not smile, because that night she died. The lady from the hospice or maybe Gretchen Adams or maybe both together would feel her nonexistent pulse and shut her open, staring eyes; they would notify the doctor or the county medical examiner. Two men with a gurney and perhaps a body bag would come that same afternoon to collect her; they would bring a black van to the house and carry the body downstairs. The job would be an easy one, the stairwell not a problem since one old woman with congestive heart disease makes for a light load. They would deposit her corpse in the van and drive off to Becker & Bushing & Cunliffe, to the doorway marked “Deliveries,” and they would have prepared her—how? who drained which vein and filled it with what, who chose the white dress Alice wore?—for the family viewing that afternoon, this thing he and his sisters have done.

There’s a Japanese restaurant out on Route 9 and something Middle Eastern or Indian near the bookstore Lyrical Ballads; they discuss if they should call around and make a reservation or just drive into town. They talk about the kind of meal Saratoga Springs might offer, the kind of place that is open off-season; when we were young, Joanna says, there was only Surf ’n’ Turf or—what was that restaurant?—Trade Winds? Let’s go cruising, David says, let’s see what the town has to offer; I’m not very hungry, says Claire.

Soon enough they find a restaurant on Caroline Street, a parking place, and enter together, David escorting them, holding the door and helping them out of their coats. Joanna wears a dark blue parka and Claire a knee-length camel’s hair coat. They are precisely the same height.

A waitress approaches: “Smoking?” she asks them. “No smoking? Three?”

“Three.”

For some minutes they study the menu, deciding what to drink and eat and listening to what sounds like Vivaldi on an electric guitar. David orders a bottle of wine. When the waitress takes their order her hip is at his elbow, and she grazes it, swaying on her platform heels; her cheek has metal studs, her nose a pair of nostril rings, and her tongue too has been pierced.

“Heavy metal,” he says to her. She smiles. Then, when she has brought their Pinot Grigio and effortfully opened it and determined to her satisfaction the issue of baked potatoes and what salad dressing to serve with which salad, when she has tucked her pen above her ear and told them, “Enjoy!” and departed, he turns to his sisters again. “So what are we going to do?” David asks.

“About what?”

“The cottage. Anybody want it?”

Claire wipes her knife with her napkin. “Is this, what, West Coast directness? Is this what they teach you in California?”

“Right, I forgot,” David says. “Here’s to never saying what, if anything, is on your mind.”

“What?”

He lifts his glass. “Here’s to Midwestern repression.”

“Oh, please,” Joanna intervenes. “Tomorrow is when we discuss it. Tomorrow morning he reads us the will.”

“I don’t want to argue,” says Claire. She drinks.

“Remember,” asks Joanna, “when we learned about Dad’s death? The day he had that accident . . .”

The soup arrives. Their waitress lights a candle.

“So how’s Ann Arbor?” David swallows. “How’s life in the big little city?”

“You should come visit,” says Claire.

“Are you all right?” Joanna asks.

Her brother shakes his head. “I miss her very much.”

“It’s what children do.”

Claire has been trying not to cry. “It’s what we’re
supposed
to do. Live on.”

The music of Vivaldi gives way to Billie Holiday and Billie Holiday to Sting. They eat. The restaurant is nearly empty: a pair of women in the corner, a table of what look like businessmen dividing up the bill. They talk about the funeral home and the cost of the arrangements and how strange it is to buy a container purchased just for burning; they talk about Bill Becker and his signet ring and family of undertakers and the last time they were together in town when everyone went to their high school reunions. Joanna lights a cigarette; she is rationing herself, she says—one every other hour, one per meal. They agree on an oak coffin and three separate urns for their mother’s remains. Claire orders tiramisu. “Three spoons,” she tells the waitress, and Joanna shakes her head and, pointing to her cigarette, says “Two.” David repeats his assertion that this evening ought to matter and this reunion count; the sisters do not contravene him or argue with each other; they have made a warring truce.

Once more, a light snow falls. They return to the cottage at nine. As if by unspoken agreement, they walk into the living room; a carpet has been rolled for storage in the corner and the space feels unlived-in, expectant. There are portraits of Alice and George at their wedding and portraits of grandparents and great-grandparents done in oil; there’s a watercolor of the cottage done by some forgotten guest and dated August 1921. Flanking the fireplace, in cabinets, stands the collection of miniature cats.

“I’m tired,” Claire announces. “I began this day too early. I was up at dawn—before it—and tomorrow is a busy day and I need to call it quits.”

“It’s only six o’clock,” says David. “California time. Except I didn’t sleep last night . . .”

“Wait up with me a little,” says Joanna. “Let’s build a fire in the living room. Let’s sit up together, all right?”

“The fireplace. You think it works?”

“I think so,” says Claire. “Check the flue.”

He does. It swivels easily, discharging soot, and he lights a piece of paper in order to check on the draft; the chimney is not blocked. From the walkway past the pantry he selects a pile of kindling and old newspaper and an armful of two-foot logs. The dry wood catches readily and flame crackles, rising; he and Joanna sit on the love seat and watch. She misses him, Joanna tells her brother; this man is the man she’s lived with the longest, sharing a roof, and now that they are grown-ups they don’t seem to visit at all.

The wine has made her garrulous; she talks about living alone all these years and if it’s different for a woman and the ways it must be different for a man. Then she talks about Leah and leaving Cape Cod, how once her daughter goes away there won’t be any family for her in driving distance. It hasn’t happened yet, says Claire; that’s true, Joanna says. In
West Side Story,
she tells them, Leah has been cast as Anita, the second most important part for a woman in the musical, and it requires her dancing; the show opens in Orleans on Friday night and she can’t wait to get back.

“I might just go with you,” says David. “I like that show.”

“Oh, Leah would be so happy! Remember when she used to say, ‘Bob’s your uncle’—whatever that means, and you’d say ‘No, it’s “Dave.” It’s “
Dave’s
your uncle,” darling.’”

He laughs. “Let me think about it.”

“Oh
please,
” Joanna says. “Don’t think about it, or say ‘maybe.’ Just come.”

Claire takes the BarcaLounger and raises her feet from the floor.

“I used to think,” says David, “hell, I’m single: white, male, unattached. I could live in Saratoga and be helpful to her—Mom. Why not just move back to this town. I used to ask myself what kept me from calling it home again and if it really
felt
like home and whether she would want me here or not.”

“Of course she would have,” says Claire.

He pokes at the fire; it flares.

“It couldn’t have been easy,” says Joanna. “These years. For Mom.”

“No.”

“What I wonder,” she continues, “is how much you understand it when you lose your memory. Your grip on things. If you know, I mean, you’re losing it or if it just goes away.”

“I can’t remember,” David says.

“Ha-ha.”

“All right. Bad joke,” he says.

“So Alzheimer’s can be a kind of comfort, maybe, a way of making things bearable. Like going into shock, I mean, when the pain’s too extreme for the body to bear. When you’re on system overload you faint . . .”

“She didn’t have Alzheimer’s,” says Claire. “Not really.”

Joanna stands. “I don’t know what else you’d call it. It’s like being a little bit, oh, a little bit a virgin. Mom always did seem—what? Forgetful, secretive.”

“Secretive?”

“There was a lot,” says David, “she didn’t want to talk about. Or not to me, at any rate . . .”

“Because you were the baby. You were the one she would try to protect.”

“Do you remember that jingle—how does it go?” Now it’s Claire’s turn to mediate, and she does this gratefully. “‘A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter’s a daughter the rest of her life.’”

“‘Takes him a wife?’ Isn’t it ‘finds him a wife’?” David asks. “Or maybe it’s ‘brings home . . .’ Whatever.”

“Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Bring home a wife,” Joanna inquires. “Is there a candidate?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m going up,” Claire says. “Beakes will be waiting for us . . .”