Fishing With RayAnne (37 page)

Under the awning, an impossibly long table has been set with white linen, gleaming cutlery, and bone china, each place with its own family of crystal water glass, white wine glass, orbed goblet for reds, and champagne flute, all reflecting the light of a hundred candles. Considering the stemware, RayAnne can assume there will be alcohol. Lots. Just as she’s wondering where her father is, he emerges from the cottage with a cup of coffee.

The patio has been transformed into an Italian terrace, the sort of atmosphere Dot always aspired to in her restaurants but could never achieve, pointing out, “Well, we’re not in Italy, are we?”

But in a pinch the Florida coast is a reasonable second to Naples. The weather is cooperating, clouds parting to reveal a rising moon, a warm evening with a mild breeze. There are menu cards at intervals along the table, even a placard listing entertainment, beginning with the trio, Tre Guidos, and concluding with sparklers and a bonfire on the beach slated for midnight.

The reception line is more serpentine than straight. RayAnne and Ky slink to the receiving end, where Bernadette is somehow able to stand next to Big Rick without hitting him—very gracious of her, RayAnne thinks. If the tables were turned, her father might be all-avenging.

Mr. D. is in the line as the emissary of Dot’s neighbors and her present life. From her past, Mr. Rondo—the reigning ambassador of Dot’s restaurant days—hunches forward from his walker to greet mourners. He’d been Dot’s maître d’ for thirty years at four different restaurants. He is someone RayAnne would like to sit down with—if anyone has stories to tell about Dot, Mr. Rondo would.

She elbows Ky. “Did you know about all this?”

“A little. Dad showed me the orders for rentals and the booze. She planned a real
partay
-party. All those guys?” Ky nods at a few of the former jockey-waiters who had ushered at the funeral. In jockey fashion they’d beaten the motorcade back to the cottage and had traded their dark suit coats for snowy white waiters’ jackets and bow ties. “They’re all here at Gran’s request.”

RayAnne frowns. “She must’ve been planning for months. Do you suppose she told
them
she was about to kill herself? And
oh by the way, will you come wait tables at my funeral
?”

“Maybe. Maybe something like that.” As Ky lowers his voice, his eyes fill. “Listen. I think it’s pretty apparent that she
wanted
us to enjoy this, or at least appreciate her effort. I mean she did all this fucking planning, right? So let’s do that.”

“Have a good time when she’s—”

“Yes.” Ky cut her off, whispering, “She’ll still be dead after the party. Let’s just pretend she’s here for now, because she
is
. Look at it all.” He squeezes her hand. “Just do as close to happy as you can—it’s only one night.”

Through the sliding glass doors, RayAnne can see the steamy kitchen is bustling with a uniformed staff.

The first mourners in the reception line reach them, sympathy oozing from sad smiles and moist eyes. RayAnne and Ky endure an onslaught of comments they would normally argue with, such as Dot being in a better place or in the Lord’s hands now, having gone to meet her maker, smiling down on them.

Actually, she’s dead.

RayAnne holds her tongue and returns polite hugs and pats. The receiving line ends near the bar. She could use a glass of something. Ky’s cheeks are stippled by faint lip marks in old-lady shades of pink, coral, and poppy.

Since the church service, RayAnne’s curiosity has been piqued by the presence of a pair of cadets in full dress uniform. How might they factor in Gran’s life? They introduce themselves. Gerard and Benjamin. Both
adored
Dot. And both watch
Fishing
every Sunday and love it. Love. It. Gerard touches the fabric of RayAnne’s sleeve and correctly guesses the vintage of the suit. Benjamin tears up upon learning Dot was married in it. They had a running date each Sunday afternoon with Dot for GTG—Gin and Tonic and Gossip.

Gerard has a trumpet case tucked under an arm.

“Are you going to play something?” RayAnne asks. “Did Dot, um,
book
you?”

Benjamin steps up. “I talked him into bringing it, wondering if maybe you’d like him to play ‘Taps’ for Dorthea.” He leans in and whispers, “I know it’s not on the program, but Gerard is amazing.”

RayAnne smiles. “I’m sure Dot would like that.”

Ky motions for the other musicians to lower their instruments and Gerard raises his trumpet, polished to a glare.

By the third note everyone has gone still. The clear brass strains rise into the sky. A few of the older fellows—veterans—hold a salute for the duration. Gerard’s eyes remain closed while he plays, bending notes liquidly, not adhering to the military standard, but adding a soulful flair of jazz. The purity of it. Mr. Zagate is shaking his head.

At the finish, every eye needs dabbing.

The first drinks are knocked back like anesthesia. From a distance, RayAnne watches Bernadette gulp a chardonnay in two goes. The waiters scurry to refill glasses with bottles that look vintage and expensive. Dot always said serve the best wine first, when guests are still in possession of their taste buds; save the lesser stuff for the drunken half of the evening. Peering in the crates behind the bar, RayAnne sees there is no cheap stuff—tonight it’s all top shelf.

Her father, she notes with some relief, seems nearly oblivious to the imbibing—it’s as if he cannot drink enough coffee. Milling mourners are steered to seats at the long table, their faces softened with spirits and candlelight. She finds the placard with her own name and plops down between Mr. D. and Dr. Phillips. Both reach for covered baskets of crusty warm French bread, conducting with their butter knives.

A perfectly chilled Chablis is poured, and an appetizer of seared scallops in a ginger-lemongrass reduction is served. Mr. Rondo kick-starts the evening with a toast and a few instructions. After each course, guests are to change seats and sit with someone different. This is pure Dot—the tradition at her dinner parties. After scallops, RayAnne shifts down the table to sit with two women who are volunteers from the homeless shelter where Dot cooked. They spear at their arugula, pear, and glazed-walnut salads, declaring them “Almost too pretty to eat!” They entertain RayAnne with Dot-isms. The Guidos play lively tunes accompanied by the clinking of cutlery and stemware. Deborah has come, resplendent in a Jamaican print with matching turban. She attracts a smattering of applause when she dances the length of the table on her way to use the bathroom, slowing just long enough to twirl both of the twins. There are a surprising number of younger people present, from the women in Dot’s book club—all under fifty—to her farmers’ market friends—an organic citrus grower, the manager of the nonprofit Ethical Tomato, a young orchardist just getting established, and the flower farmer who had decorated the table so simply and elegantly—all ivory petals and pale greenery, nothing remotely funereal.

Dot’s water aerobics classmates are easy to pick out; they’ve all worn swim goggles around their wrists like bracelets. They make a production of presenting RayAnne with Dot’s goggles, which they have decorated with tiny shells and rhinestones. She is able to not cry only because looping the goggles around her own wrist makes her inexplicably happy.

During the course of Italian wedding soup, a pair of sisters barely in their twenties tell RayAnne how Dot mentored them with her many suggestions and encouragement when they’d launched their Cuban street food truck.

The musical chairs take on a slower pace, a humorous shuffle of people reluctant to leave their seatmates and newfound friends. RayAnne finds herself joking with the same elderly bakers who had made the cake for Dot’s birthday party only months before. Afterward, she shifts between two new tablemates. They are awed by all the fuss, relative newcomers to Dune Cottage Village who had only met Dot a few times and had been invited here by Dot herself.

“Are all the funerals here like this?”

RayAnne laughs.

Those who knew Dot well are not at all surprised at what she has accomplished here. And whether they know Dot intimately or merely in passing, all have lovely things to say to RayAnne about her grandmother.

A very tiny woman named Alice with a white beehive muses over how Dot was always able to convince whomever she was speaking to that they were the most important person in the room. “Oh, yes, wasn’t that just Dot! Your grandmother was like that—just like Bill Clinton, of course not so much with the shenanigans.” Alice rises on her toes and winks. “At least as far as we
know
.” When she throws her head back to laugh, Alice tips off balance stiffly, like a bowling pin trying to decide. She slips from RayAnne’s reach like something greased, but fortunately Ky happens to be passing and handily catches her, which everyone finds hilarious.

The jockeys parry and retreat with their wine bottles and serving trays, spiriting away dirty china and dealing in clean replacements. The main course is an autumn vegetable ratatouille with tenderloin medallions and sage gnocchi. A neighbor stands up to toast and tells how Dot brought her suppers every night for a week after her hip surgery, but insisted on serving them outside, each time setting the table a few feet farther down the boardwalk, giving her no choice but to walk for her suppers. She laughs. “Dot’s version of physical therapy—dangling a ginger-glazed carrot.”

By the time the cheese and fruit is wheeled out, most everyone has made some toast or tribute; even the waiters have, at some juncture in the meal, stopped in midserve or midpour to offer their own few words, making many versions of the same joke—
I’ll keep this short
. Most tributes begin with a smile and end on a sniffle.

They are celebrating a life and everyone is feeling very good. Most ignore the proffered coffee and hold out their glasses for the carafes of liqueurs and brandies.

Ky has given up trying to keep the twins from under the table, though no one seems to mind. It will be discovered too late that they’ve been taking cell phones from purses and jackets hung on chairs, then snapping pictures with them under the table—blurred shots of men’s shiny ankles and women’s stocking toes with shoes or sandals pried off their bunioned feet, dim snapshots of hiked skirts and legs not quite prim, thighs puffing from girdles as if from sausage casings. One catches a man’s hand caught on a thigh not his own, the blur of a slap.

After investigating the flashes going off under the tablecloth, Ky pulls the boys out by their ankles, and they return the phones to pockets and purses, though not necessarily the right ones.

Big Rick stands, clears his throat, and pulls a folded scrap from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “This is Dot’s toast. Many of you have been wondering if she’d written something. She did.” He scans the table while putting on his reading glasses. “It’s short.” He looks and sounds sober as a judge.

“Beautiful people. Thank you for indulging me. I know some of you are shocked by the way I’ve chosen to go. For those of you who are angry, please forgive, so that you can stop being sad and disappointed. Be kind to my family.” Big Rick raises his champagne flute of Diet Coke, reading on. “I have loved you all. Please enjoy your meal, and don’t forget to take doggie bags of leftovers the boys will pack for you.”

This gets a few mild chuckles.

Big Rick makes a sweeping gesture as he reads the final line, “Eat, drink, and be merry.”

RayAnne waits for the end, but Big Rick is shoving the paper in his breast pocket.

No
for tomorrow we shall die
. There is a silence, then glasses begin clinking. Crystal and smiles reflect candlelight.

RayAnne readies to get everyone’s attention to thank them for coming and to remind them the fireworks on the beach will commence shortly. Surrounding her are wise and lovely old people who will follow Gran to their own endings, and plenty of younger people who will only take more time to catch up to the end. It’s going to be rough with no Gran in her future—surely RayAnne is in for more heavy grief. Someday the memories will uplift rather than squeeze—the day may come when the taste of celery and raisins will not make her cry.

For now, she adores every person in her sight, loves them all for loving Dot. The meaning of what Gran had said with such conviction—despite being weak and ill—comes clear.
All we have is who we have.
She’s about to tap her glass with her knife so she might quote and toast Gran herself, but just as she’s taking a breath, something damp snuffles into the space between her shins. She yelps and, expecting one of the twins, yanks up the tablecloth, but it is a dog’s snout poking from underneath, a dog too large to be Trinket. Her instinct is to knee it away, just as the dog’s head tilts into the light. She does a double take, crying, “Rory?”

It can’t be.
How?
But it is, and he’s out from under the table, his tail thwacking at speed. She squeals, “Hey! This is my dog!” RayAnne holds his paws up as if dancing with a short man, and twirls. “It’s Rory!”

She spins to the empty space behind, looking around, scanning faces for Cassi, one of the few people on the planet clever enough to beam a dog from Minnesota to Florida. Ky sidles up and points down the length of the table.

“Ray, I think you have company.”

T
WENTY

Most waiters have stopped serving and are plunked down. Some are slamming shots, others are engaged in a napkin-folding contest; having cleared a middle section of the table, they work their mastery, creating intricately folded bishop hats, rockets, and a horse’s head to appreciative murmurs. To a cheer and a round of applause, one flourishes a surprisingly anatomically accurate penis, erect. Dot would have loved it.

Guests RayAnne thought would surely have nodded off or wheeled themselves home by now seem to have gotten a second wind. The latecomer is being badgered with greetings, everyone wanting to know
who
. . . another of Dot’s posthumous surprises?

Rory clings to RayAnne like a toddler, having jumped into her arms, sniffing as if to confirm it’s really her, his barky little complaints translating to “Where have you
been
?” His tail sweeps a champagne flute clear off the table to shatter against one of the awning poles. Fifty heads turn.

RayAnne shrugs. “It’s not a real party until a glass gets broken. That’s what Dot always said.” People laugh as she shifts Rory’s warm weight in her arms. Something that isn’t anything seems to have descended over the celebration, over
her
. Not Rory’s impossible arrival, nor the presence of everyone gathered, but everyone and everything at once—the surroundings, the sea air and torchlight. All pulls into full Technicolor surround-sound focus. Talk and laughter and the sounds of surf swell. The present—for lack of a better word—and all it entails has suddenly become
more
. There’s no expressing the feeling—but maybe it’s what poets are always trying to get at.

In the commotion, she has slipped into stillness herself. The nightmarish clutter of the last week, the knots of emotion, wringing as they are, fit somehow, at least in the scheme of things, and she understands it is her duty, painful or not, to know this.

He’s standing at the end of the table, looking down the bowling-alley length of linen, now stained with wine, dribbled with candle wax, littered with cherry stems, cheese rinds, crumbs, and cigar ash. She’s not at all surprised to see him. Making his way along the table, Hal politely stops to answer questions and explain his presence, canting his head repeatedly toward RayAnne.

Even at this distance, she sees the days of stubble carving a shadow across his jaw. He moves a bit stiffly, rolling his shoulders as if they ache. He’s driven, of course. From Minnesota to Florida to bring Rory to her.

When he’s closer, she can see he’s wrecked. Her first words are laced with concern. “Oh. You look so tired.”

“And you look lovely.”

She begins to balk, but then lets the compliment wash over her.

He stops and grins, the dimples in play, unsure. “Timing, huh?”

RayAnne shakes her head and gently sets Rory down. She straightens to face Hal, and unblinking, she steps forward. “Your timing isn’t so bad.”