Good Mourning (9 page)

I nodded respectfully. “Of course.”

“The family wants this to be . . . over the top. We need to make anything that they want happen, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” I said.

An hour later, Dr. Feelgood's family was standing in the foyer. I felt a little embarrassed at the garlic smell wafting from the break room downstairs. It was lunchtime, and Bill and some of the guys had ordered from their favorite Italian restaurant. Tony looked a little more nervous than usual and wiped his hand on the back of his jacket before offering it to the two people standing in front of him. “We're so sorry for your loss,” he said.

I ignored Monica's gaze as Tony and I walked the family into his office, very conscious that this was going to be a truly elaborate planning session.

The family sat down and I pulled out a notebook to write down their requests. “Did you have anything particular in mind?” I asked. I noticed that Tony hadn't taken out his binder of flower arrangements. This client was beyond lilies, and Tony was going for a bigger sell.

The man and woman spoke to each other in Spanish for a moment and then turned to face me. Then in English, the woman said, “The best of everything.”

Tony nodded, and I could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes. “That's what we're here for,” he said. Clearly these people had money to burn, but I still felt a little guilty about letting them overspend on a memorial service. Some of the best funerals I had witnessed since working at Crawford weren't necessarily the most expensive, but the ones that had heart—personalized eulogies, a friend who played guitar, mementos from the person's life scattered around the room. Tony's voice broke my train of thought. “Liz, did you get that?”

I looked up, startled. “Oh, um, yes. Can you say it one more time?”

The woman started talking so fast that even though she was speaking English, I could barely make out what she was saying.
Orchards? No, no, that doesn't make sense. Oh, orchids! Wait, how many? Forty
thousand
dollars' worth?
I wrote it down, waiting,
hoping
that Tony would step in and bring them down to earth. Instead, he nodded as they rattled off other demands: They wanted to fly palm trees in to make the space feel more like home. They also wanted five-foot vases and enough candles to light up a city block.

“And what about the casket?” Tony asked.

I felt a knot in my stomach. I knew what was coming next.

“Oh,” said the woman, looking at the man and shrugging. “The best you have.”

Tony tried to hide a small smile. “Well, we have a
bronze one. It's a beauty. Top of the line. Bronze through and through, velvet lined . . . you can't do better than that.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Fine.”

I remembered that casket from when Tony walked me through the options for my dad, and I had practically choked on my horror when he mentioned the price. But he had quickly switched gears when I told him that my dad's office had been all mahogany. “Well then, he should have a mahogany casket,” said Tony. Once Tony knew that it made sense for my dad, he didn't push. Spending a lot on a casket seemed crazy to me, especially for cremations, when the whole casket (with the body inside, of course) was burned in the incinerator. I had once asked Bill if Tony ever swapped out the pricey casket, cleaned it up, and put it back in the showroom—the families would never have known—but he swore it never happened. Bill said that Haitians sometimes throw stones on top of the casket after a funeral to crack it a bit, so that the funeral home can't try to resell it, trivia I never got the chance to bring up at a party. As I took down the note for a bronze casket for Dr. Feelgood, I wondered if Tony really just thought that people who could afford the best should have exactly that—or if it was all about the money to him.

After the meeting, I called every prop shop in the city looking for extra ways to turn our chapel into a space suitable for the party boy of honor. Within hours, a crew of
twenty people was hanging ornate drapery along the walls, and huge ceramic planters were placed around the room for the palm trees. Then it was time to make the guest list—­European royalty would be there, as well as A-list designers, famous musicians, and a whole stream of socialites, some of whom I'd met before, and others flying in from across the globe.

Two days later, the palm trees were in place and our chapel looked more like Bungalow 8, which was, at the time anyway, the chicest hangout in the city. Total bill? $150,000. I tried to keep a straight face as I watched Bill give a few last-minute touches to Dr. Feelgood's body. The family had requested that their brother be buried in his favorite outfit: a Snoopy T-shirt and a pair of neon-green sneakers. They also wanted him to be clutching a bottle of his favorite drink, which is where absinthe came in. I watched Bill delicately place the dead hands around the bottle. The funeral lived up to the hype—hundreds of people came, arriving in their Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. One woman even brought her white Maltese, and even though pets aren't allowed in Crawford, Tony let a few things slide for a six-figure funeral. (She didn't bother to have it on a leash, just walked in and let her four-legged friend mingle with the guests.) But I couldn't shake the feeling that for as many people as there were in ­attendance—and the place was packed—it all felt a little empty. My fears were confirmed when I saw guests coming out of the bathroom with red noses. Suddenly it made sense
why the family had asked if the upstairs bathroom had ­marble countertops.

I was glad that we could accommodate Dr. Feelgood, a lover of women and booze and who knows what else, with a send-off that felt like
him
. But I thought about my friends—the ones getting a little too old for the club scene, the ones snorting coke at work to keep up with the Wall Street crowd—and I felt relieved that my life didn't revolve around partying anymore. It was one thing to live up your youth at a club, drink in hand. It was another to die that way with gray hair, people getting high before the eulogy starts.

I hated to say it, but it also made me think of my lifelong friend Ben: he had a habit of going out and going out
hard
. Besides Gaby and me, his best friends were trust-fund babies, club owners, or trust-fund-baby club owners. There was always a lot of music, a lot of booze, and a lot of money being thrown around. It scared me a little to see someone who had so much potential to make a difference in the world just party it all away. I'd gone through a party phase of my own, but I'd grown out of it. In some ways, my dad's illness helped me mature faster than many of my friends. I knew that life wasn't just about crazy get-togethers and dancing until the sun came up, that it could end any moment, even when you least expected it.

At the end of the service, after the last of the guests had gotten back into the same fancy cars that had brought them in the first place, I walked into the now-empty room that
had been filled with the sounds of people kissing each other on both cheeks and telling stories about the guy in the casket. Now it was just the two of us among a sea of wilting orchids. “Wherever you are, I hope you're having a good time,” I whispered. Then I picked up a large arrangement—it was almost as big as me—and carried it out of the room, down the stairs, and into the back of a town car that was taking me home. I thought I'd invite a few friends over for a ­little dinner party and arrange the flowers all over the table.

Instead I went home and fell asleep, alone next to a four-foot tower of orchids.

THE HARDEST
high-profile funeral, though, was the one I didn't see coming. I could tell from the giddy expression on Monica's face that someone major
was behind closed doors with Tony when I walked in for my shift, but I had no idea how personal it would become. On this particular day, it was obvious by the heightened energy that whoever had come in was beyond just famous—Monica even said hello to me in all her excitement. But she wasn't the one I was worried about. After seeing Tony handle clients, I cringed with compassion thinking about whomever he was up-selling in his office.

A few minutes later, I followed my inkling upstairs, where Tony was standing over a fancy coffin with a velvet interior. My eyes darted from him to a very famous actor and his brother. We had been at a few parties together over the years,
but we'd never really talked other than your basic “Nice to meet you's” among the
thud-thud-thud
of club music. The awkward thing about working at a funeral home was that it was never really necessary to ask, “What brings you here?” The more accurate and uncomfortable question was, “Who?”

“Mike?” I said, not sure where to begin. “What . . . I mean . . . who . . . I'm so sorry.” I was just about to reintroduce myself, not convinced the recognition would be mutual, when he interrupted my thought.

“Liz, right?” he asked, coming toward me. He looked relieved, more relieved than you'd expect for someone bumping into someone he'd shared little more than a bottle of Ketel One with. “What are you . . . do you
work
here?”

I smiled. “I do. Let me help you.”

Tony gave me a look like,
You got this?
and I nodded. It's not like we worked on commission—my assisting meant he could take a breather before the next client came in. Still, he didn't leave the room entirely, instead shifting over to the corner so that he could supervise what I was doing, and probably so he could jump in if I royally messed up.

“May I ask who we're looking for?” I said, placing my hand on the outside of the mahogany casket that Mike was staring at intently.

Without moving his eyes, Mike whispered, “My sister.” His voice quivered and he looked down. “She was killed in a motorcycle accident yesterday.”

I placed my hand on his arm and steered him and his
brother toward the other side of the room. He said his sister had been in her twenties. She didn't need to be buried in a stuffy wood coffin with a red interior. We stopped in front of a shiny white casket.

“How about this one?” I said. I knew Tony would give me an earful later—the white casket was almost half the price of some of the others—but it would be perfect for Mike's sister. From the way Mike made it sound, she had been a dynamic girl with a casual sense of style. Her memorial should reflect that.

Mike and his brother gave it the once-over, then nodded in agreement.

“Okay, then,” I said, keeping my voice soft and guiding them out of the room—while viewing urns and caskets was a necessary step in planning any funeral, I never liked to let clients linger in there too long. It was the saddest of the rooms, to me, because unlike the memorial rooms, where wakes were held and families shared stories about the person who had passed, this room was just logistics. The body had to go
somewhere
, and these were the options.

I showed Mike the room where his sister's service would be held. He looked exhausted, his eyes swollen and sagging, but he tried to take it all in. “Where will she go?” he asked, staring at the carpet. I pointed toward the front of the room. He just stood there, and the weight of his sadness filled the whole space. It was like his heart was beating through the speakers, slowly, mournfully. I had to do something.

“What did your sister like to do for fun?” I said, breaking the rhythm.

Mike didn't hesitate. “Horses. She
loved
horses. When we were kids, we had to sit through her equestrian competitions and they were like hours long . . .”

His thought drifted off somewhere I couldn't follow—he was in his memories, with her. I knew the feeling. Sometimes, after my father died, I'd talk to him without even realizing I was doing it, like we had entered some bubble that all the other living people and all the other dead people couldn't get into. Sometimes I even called his phone without thinking about it. I was devastated when my cell phone had died, the last voice mail I'd had from him gone for good. I felt a similar pang when, eight months after Dad died, my mom had finally changed her outgoing message at home to say, “You've reached Francesca.” Not “Brett and Francesca,” like they had always had.

“Do you want to bring in some of her riding things?” I said. “And maybe some photos of her? I can arrange everything—just put it all in a box and leave it with me, and I'll set it up myself.”

“You'd do that?” Mike said. The relieved look came over his face again. This time, he even smiled. “That would be great. My mom would love it, too. That would be really nice.”

I stayed late that night waiting for the box to arrive. I figured an assistant would bring it over, but Mike walked it in
himself—he said he needed to make sure it all got there safely. I took the box and gave him a hug, then went to work setting up his sister's things. A well-loved black riding jacket, the buttons coming loose at the seams. A framed photo of her in riding gear. Blue ribbons from competitions she'd won years earlier. It could have been the contents of any girl's room. I placed the photos around her coffin next to white candles. Then I tucked her ribbons into the side of the casket. There were other belongings, too, that I displayed around the room—books she loved, her favorite sweatshirt. Things people would remember her by. Things people would look at and say, “Remember the time she . . .” I still wasn't totally used to being alone in a room with a dead body, but I couldn't avoid looking at her—Bill had covered all the bruises from the accident, and you'd never have known how she'd died. It felt surreal that this girl, almost my age, was herself a thing of the past—her belongings now like artifacts in a museum.