We invited him to sit with us, offered him coffee and cookies, arranged ourselves to receive his sympathy.
“She was only six years older than I am,” Yuri told us, stirring heavy cream into his coffee, taking two cookies, then a third, as if afraid the plate would be removed from his reach. His hands were pudgy, the fingers like little sausages, his earlobes unusually long, and altogether he was a fleshy presence. “But then, she had that Alzheimer’s,” and he looked sympathetically around the table, taking us in one at a time, with slightly bloodshot eyes. Mumma always said Yuri was a drinker. Not a bad drinker, just a heavy drinker, and always stone-cold sober for meetings, she assured us, she saw to that. He said, “Well, I can tell you, that was a sad thing. A woman like her.”
We murmured agreement.
“It takes us three people to do everything she got done. Your mother…They broke the mold when they made her.”
More likely Mumma broke the mold being made, I thought; but I didn’t say it. Amy, from the expression on her face, might have been thinking the same.
“And she did a lot of good for this town,” Yuri went on. He shifted in the chair, leaned forward to take another clutch of cookies. “The stoplight at Beach Road. The planting around Town Hall, and the fiberglass flagpole in front, too. Which is why I’m here, right now, in fact. We’re agreed, all the selectmen, because we heard there was some little problem about where to hold the service.”
“Not a service,” Jo told him. “Mumma didn’t want any kind of service.”
“Well I know that, of course. That is to say, I didn’t exactly know that, but it’s what I would have expected. If I’d thought about what I expected, that is to say. Don’t worry that I’m thinking religious service, Jo. Or any of you. That’s why I’m here, because we thought you might like to use the Town Hall.”
“Mumma would be pleased,” I told Yuri, quite truthfully. I didn’t say honored, because I didn’t want to prevaricate. I knew that if Mumma had been alive, and if she had been herself, and if the offer had been made, “They knew a good thing when they got their hands on me,” would have been her opinion.
“We need to talk this over. We’ll call you if…” I said, not entirely candidly, “You see, Mumma left us a letter of instructions.”
“We just want you to know, the space is available,” Yuri said, rising, gathering up cookies.
“Pretty specific instructions,” I said.
“Well, that’s just what she’d do, isn’t it?” he asked. “She was a fine woman,” he told us, turning back, one hand crammed with cookies and his face sad as a bloodhound’s. “There was no side to her, was there? She just got done what needed doing. If I hadn’t been married already, I’d have gone after her,” he told us, and left.
Sarah came in to scold us. “You shouldn’t be laughing like that, with Gran just dead,” but the empty plate deflected her and, “I guess he liked my cookies,” eleven-year-old Sarah noted with satisfaction.
“Are there more?” I asked her. “Because people are going to be coming by.”
“I know that,” she told me. “I made lots, and iced tea too, and I’m running the dishwasher, but I have baseball practice this afternoon so you’re going to have to take care of serving it yourselves and what’s so funny now?”
“We’ll be fine, thank you,” I said. “We’ll manage somehow.”
“You’re a good cook,” said the more diplomatic Meg.
“It’s in my blood,” Sarah said. “Not from Mother, from Gran. These are Gran’s recipe,” she explained, and removed the platter from the table to take it out to the kitchen for refilling. We returned to our present difficulties.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” asked Amy. “Thinking we can’t do it there? Isn’t the Town Hall about twenty by twenty? With one big plate glass window that faces the brick wall of the bank? I’m right that it’s pretty scruffy, too. Aren’t I? Bulletin boards on the walls.”
“Not nearly big enough,” Jo agreed.
“And those curtains,” Meg added.
“What about the school?” I asked.
“An elementary school auditorium?” Meg asked, amazed.
“For our mother’s funeral?” Amy echoed.
“What about separation of church and state?” Jo wondered.
“That makes it even better,” I argued. “I mean, if it can’t be at Saint Stephen’s because that’s a church, then there should be no problem for the school.”
They didn’t agree with me, not one of them, but then Uncle Ethan telephoned from San Francisco, a phone call that turned the tide at least in my general direction.
“It’s 10 a.m. out here,” Uncle Ethan told me. “It’s Friday,” he said, as if we might not know that fact, and then added, “I’ve got a game,” and as if to hit us with the full weight of his thoughtfulness, he added, “Golf.”
I turned on the speakerphone that any couple with children and joint business interests needs to have, to include my sisters in the conversation. They started out with the end of that word, “—olf.”
Uncle Ethan continued, “The big house can’t be made ready until Tuesday, soonest. I’ll call young Grangery’s nephew and get things moving. Or maybe you can call him? He’s the caretaker now.”
As long as Uncle Ethan, who lived on the other side of the country, and Aunt Juliet, whom we hadn’t seen or heard from since Pops’ funeral, were alive, the last survivors of their generation, they held ownership of the big house. “I’ll be arriving Monday midday,” Uncle Ethan’s voice snaked out from the speakerphone.
“You’re coming east?” I asked.
“For the service. For the interment.” He took an impatient breath and I could almost hear him looking at his watch. “Your mother’s funeral.”
“How did you hear?” We had so far called only those few people who had kept in touch with us about Mumma while she’d been in the nursing home, and none of those were Howlands, or Spencers.
“McGonigle called me. Not the one your mother liked, that fat selectman she always wanted people to vote for. The McGonigle who used to be commodore of the Yacht Club, the selectman’s cousin. He called to tell me. Your mother was a Howland. By marriage, but still,” Uncle Ethan reminded me. “You’ll want the big house opened. I should be there.” My sisters shook their heads at me, and for once we were all in agreement.
“Why?” I asked.
“For the reception following interment,” he answered impatiently. “Are you alone there, Beth? Or is George with you?”
“We won’t be needing the big house,” I told him. “But thank you for offering,” I added, my mother having insisted on good manners when dealing with one’s elders.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Uncle Ethan said.
“There’s no need for you to come,” I continued, adding another mannerly afterthought, “It’s such a distance.”
“Don’t be a stubborn fool,” Uncle Ethan advised me. “It’s not as if I want to take the time, or travel the distance.”
“She wouldn’t want you to either,” I told him. “So you better not. She wouldn’t have gone to your funeral,” I said, “not in California.” (And not in Wampanoag, either, but I didn’t see the need to tell him that.) “But thank you, Uncle Ethan. I have to go now. You know how much there is to do at a time like this.”
“Put George on,” he said.
“Goodbye, Uncle Ethan,” I said, and hung up.
At about that time, people began to arrive with casseroles, hams and coffee cakes, bundt cakes and molded salads, and the phone began to ring, people offering sympathy, wondering when the service would be. Meg and Jo took care of the phone. I answered the door and talked with callers. Amy set food out on the dining room table, never neglecting to keep the plate of cookies filled. She was a well-trained aunt and Mumma’s daughter, too; she knew better than to step on Sarah’s toes, even inadvertently.
Consulting individually with each of my sisters, lest any one hesitation be taken up and turn into a gr
oundswell of negation, I received the go-ahead to telephone the principal of the elementary school, at home, of course, and after school let out, the request being a personal favor and no school administrator in such a small town claiming the right to an unlisted phone number. But Andy was adamant. “It’s not appropriate, it’s just not appropriate, Beth.” That was all he would say, no matter how I argued it. “I’m sorry for your loss. She was before my time, but I’ve heard how much she did for the school. Unfortunately, it’s not an appropriate use of a school auditorium.”
After consulting again, I called the library and got the same response, although couched in a different cliché: “Oh, Beth, I hadn’t heard, I’m so sorry. But the meeting room for a funeral service? I can’t say yes, I’m afraid. It would set a precedent, you see, and we’re a public institution. We can’t set a precedent like that.”
In a lull among the callers, while we were washing the dishes and George had left to pick up first Sarah from the playing field, then Dot from Bourne where she had been spending the weekend with her cousins, and then Emily at the Buzzards Bay bus station, on her return from a shortened football weekend with her boyfriend at Andover, we four considered the problem.
“Here? Should we have it here?” I asked, dismayed at the prospect, but resolute.
“This house isn’t nearly big enough,” Amy told me. “Mumma knew a lot of people. And this doesn’t even include Boston, or the business. You’d be surprised.”
“No I wouldn’t,” I told her.
“We’ll have to rent a hall somewhere,” Jo decided. “Or the banquet room of a restaurant? It won’t be so bad. Lots of people get married in restaurants, these days. Some of the larger places have event packages, they take care of everything. Anything would be better than the big house. We do agree about that? For Mumma, I mean. For Mumma’s funeral.”
“Not a funeral,” I reminded them, adding, “and she liked some of the Howlands, Grandmother and Uncle Brundy, and Aunt Juliet. Okay, maybe she didn’t like Juliet, but she respected what she did with her life. And don’t forget Uncle Giancarlo. All right, he’s not a Howland,” I granted.
“I don’t know why you keep wanting to quarrel about it,” Amy complained. “It’s annoying. You know the big house is impossible.”
I didn’t apologize. She was right, I did know that, but I wanted to keep Mumma’s complications clear, to myself, to all of us.
• • •
Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms showed up in the early evening. She had brought her little husband with her, a pale man, his silvery-white hair thin across his scalp; she had dressed him out in white linen over a dark shirt, very stylish.
By then we were all fatigued, by the attempts to think of an appropriate and available venue as well as by the number of callers, by all the sympathy extended and accepted, exchanged, by all the human intercourse of the day, the offering of food and drink, the washing of glasses and mugs and plates and silver, the grateful reception of plates and platters of food, by the smiling; and that after the big adjustment of the day before. People had come out of the woodwork, all day, to say they were sorry about Mumma, on the phone, at the door, in the mail. People I’d only heard the names of wanted to offer sympathy and praise and reminiscences.
Strangers telephoned. “Kathleen Ralster’s great-niece? You know, the Ralster Children’s Room at the Cambridge library? Well, Aunt Kitty always talked about your mother. She was so proud of that Children’s Room, Aunt Kitty. It was a memorial for her two sons, did you know that? They both died in the war so I never met them, but…I think I would have liked your mother,” she said.
I had been hoping to turn off the living room lights and withdraw with my sisters and a bottle of wine to the back porch, leaving George and the girls to arrange some kind of supper for themselves when they got home, so I was especially not pleased to see Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms at the door. I was not in a mood to be responsive to Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms.
She had thrown Mumma over after Mumma had been such a good friend, and Mumma had (uncharacteristically, entirely uncharacteristically) not grumbled, or reviled, or talked analytically about it, not once, to any of us, and not to Pops either. I asked him. It had been Mumma in deep denial, full sail ahead. She had simply reverted to her previous position on the question of Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms, as if the two years of intimacy had never intervened. “Life’s too short to waste time crying over milk somebody else has spilled,” she told me, when I foolishly tried to offered a sympathetic ear, or shoulder, or embrace. “You’re smart enough to forget about her,” Mumma advised me.
Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms arrived at my house, that is to say at Mumma’s old house, to offer us what she called “Aunt Ditsey’s Southwestern chicken casserole,” adding, “Your mother loved it so I didn’t mind the trouble of making it. I’ll just take it out to the kitchen, shall I? My goodness, it’s been years since I’ve been in this house, you’ve done wonders, Beth.”
Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms was wearing one of those Castleberry knitted suits, beige with dark blue trim, a beige silk blouse with a bow at the neck, low-heeled leather pumps with squared-off toes. She wore pearls and gold chains, bracelets and rings, pearl clip-on earrings in ears that had never been pierced; she wore full makeup and freshly coiffed hair. She had come to pay a sympathy call and she was doing it right, for everyone to see.
What I saw was what I had never been able to see when Mumma was sharing the stage with her, which was how very pretty Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms was, with her clean features and deep-set violet-blue eyes. I had to realize what a lovely young woman she must have been—dainty, delicate, almost beautiful. For the first time, I could see her appeal.
“You’re going to miss her terribly, I know,” Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms said to me, with a hand laid prettily on my forearm. “It’s a great loss.” She added, reminding me of her qualifications to say this, “Rida was a good friend to me when I needed one.”
“Better than you were to her,” I agreed.
Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I know. I know. I always felt so bad. I always wanted to explain, about Jake, you know, he’s…He looks so self-assured but he’s really…He’s very fragile, you know. Why—and Rida knew this, how serious it is—he sees his psychiatrist three times a week, poor man.”
I said nothing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jo, who is by far the kindest of us, move over to rescue me, or at least join us. Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms gave me a few seconds to say whatever it was I was supposed to say in response to that confidence, then, since I maintained my silence, went on.
“I tried to talk to her, you know. After…oh, about a year after, when she had had time to calm down. But she pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about. ‘You have a husband, you know how it is,’ I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, Beth, but your mother could be awfully stubborn.”
Reaching out to clasp Jo’s offered hand, I was pleased to remember that. “Yes, wasn’t she? I always admired it in her, didn’t you?”
“Yes, of course.” Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms tried to smile. “But it could make her a little unforgiving.”
“Mumma did have a strong sense of right and wrong,” I agreed, and drew Jo in. “Wouldn’t you say that about her, Jo?”
“We are speaking of your dear mother,” Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms said, laying her hand on Jo’s arm. “I was saying how much I missed her friendship, and Beth—if I may be frank?—I am getting the distinct impression that Beth thinks I did your poor dear mother some wrong.”
“But you did, didn’t you? Dropping her flat like that?” I said.
“You look so well, Jonquil,” Jo said. “And that casserole smells delicious.” She placed herself so that Jonquil Cartenbury Heolms would have to turn away from me to accept the compliments, and thus release me.
But I wasn’t quite ready to be set free. “Not that she cared,” I added.
“I was about to tell Beth,” Jonquil
said, “and it’s in Latin too. Nihil nisi bonum. You both know Latin, don’t you? Rida had such clever girls. She used to boast about her girls. Oh, and your father, too, of course. Don’t speak ill of the dead,” she mistranslated. “But you’re something of an academic yourself, Beth,” and she turned to Jo, recognizing the safer sister, “isn’t she?”
Then I did leave. I went through the dining room and out into the kitchen, where I found Jake Heolms standing in front of the dishwasher, facing a glass-fronted cupboard of baking supplies. He turned as I entered, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights, then as I got closer (on my way to get myself a glass for a slug of scotch, or maybe just wine), he essayed a smile. It was the saddest, most hopeful smile I have ever seen. His eyes were a washed-out blue, his eyelashes and eyebrows colorless, and altogether he looked like someone unfit for this life. “Mr. Heolms, hello,” I said. “Can I reach by you?”
“Oh. Sorry.” He stepped aside, watching me take down a glass. “I wonder if I too might…?” not quite daring to finish the sentence.
“Wine? White?” I asked, opening the refrigerator door. I had decided that scotch was not a good idea for me and a worse one for him.
“Just whatever you yourself…” he said. His voice was reedy, his shoulders narrow, and he kept his hands jammed into his jacket pockets as if to keep them safe from notice, or from misbehaving. “I don’t want to be a bother.”
“Why should it be a bother when I’m getting one for myself as well?”
“Well, two is twice one,” he said with a nervous little laugh. “You do remind me of her. A little. Your sisters, too—taken all together, you really remind me. I only met her once, but your mother…” His sad voice faded away to silence.
I poured wine for both of us. He took his glass as if unsure what to do with it. I raised mine and offered a toast, “To Mumma.”
A thin little line of tears leaked out of his eyes and dribbled down the sides of his nose. He didn’t seem to notice them. “She took against me,” he admitted, embarrassed. “Jonquil tried to spare me. I only met her once, but your mother was…She was like a transfusion, a blood transfusion. Have you ever had a blood transfusion?”