Sing It to Her Bones (9 page)

Afterward I toasted a bagel and ate it dry, washed down with orange juice. When the morning paper came, I was half afraid to pick it up, expecting to see a screaming headline,
NAVAL ACADEMY PROFESSOR CHARGED WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT
, but there was nothing. Just the shenanigans as usual in the District of Columbia. In the Metro section, though, a small story about Katie Dunbar caught my eye. The medical examiner had released her body. Katie’s funeral would be on Wednesday.

Suddenly nothing seemed as important to me as getting back to Pearson’s Corner. There was nothing I could do in Annapolis anyway, except brood about my
crumbling marriage and my nonexistent career. I would attend Katie’s funeral, meet her family, talk to her friends. Who among them, I wondered, could have been responsible for her death?

Figuring Paul would never miss them, I packed up the
Post
and
Sun
classified sections and stocked up on envelopes and stationery and a roll of stamps from Paul’s desk. I threw some clean underwear and a simple black dress into an overnight bag.

Tomorrow I’d start some serious networking. I’d call all my friends and let them know I was job hunting. In the meantime I’d bunk with Connie. I wondered how much she’d have to know.

But Paul had already called his sister. I knew that the minute I walked into Connie’s studio, two hours later after what seemed the longest drive of my life.

“Hannah,” she said. An open-ended sentence. And I was bawling again, in her arms.

chapter

7

When I purchased my little black dress at
Hechts in Annapolis Mall, the label said it was crush-resistant and wrinkle-free. It also fitted as if it were made for me, or so I had been assured by the plump sixtyish saleswoman, the one who always managed to tap on my dressing room door—“How are we doing, hon?”—just as I had my head caught in the lining of some garment or was struggling, half naked, to zip up a pair of pants one size too small. The perfect travel outfit, she declared when I emerged from the dressing room to check the fit in front of a three-way mirror. If so, the manufacturer had never tested it out on a consumer like me. When I extracted it from the overnight bag at Connie’s, that perfect little black dress was a mass of wrinkles, as if I’d spent a restless night sleeping
in it or on it. Connie doesn’t own an iron, so I hung the dress in the bathroom while I took my shower, marginally improving the situation. A colorful gypsy scarf with an elaborate fringe borrowed from Connie’s extensive collection completed the transformation. With luck, everyone would notice the gold, purple, and turquoise flowers and not the remaining wrinkles.

But I didn’t think anything could be done about the middle-aged face and puffy eyelids I was seeing in Connie’s bathroom mirror. I looked as if I’d been stung by bees. I hadn’t given my eyes much of a chance to recover, either, having spent every night since Saturday crying myself to sleep.

On the vanity, Connie had a flat wicker basket of cosmetics to choose from, many I recognized as the free-gift-when-you-buy-fifteen-dollars’-worth-of-our-products variety. I selected a beige foundation and smoothed it on, stroked my cheeks with blusher, then began working on my eyes with a bluish liner. Because of my unsteady hand, I only made matters worse. In addition to puffy, my lower lids were now rimmed with blue and smudged, like bruises. It looked hopeless.

I sat down on the toilet seat and fought back fresh tears of anger and frustration. Connie had reassured me, about twenty times since breakfast, that everything would be all right with Paul. But what did she know, really? As close as we had become, I knew that she was biased in favor of her brother, and who could blame her? Earlier I had overheard her on the phone
with him, reporting in some detail on my current condition and reassuring him that everything would be all right with me: “Just give her time.”

Time! Why was there never enough time? I checked my watch, made sure my wig was on straight and appeared before Connie in the kitchen, as presentable as I would ever get under the circumstances. I caught her leaning against the sink, drinking coffee, her head tipped way back to get the last few drops, which I knew would be thick with sugar. Over a long-sleeved black cotton dress she wore a stunning vest elaborately embroidered with gold and silver threads.

“You look like the proper mourner,” she said, placing her empty cup in the sink. “Love the scarf!” She examined my makeup. “You should let me work on your eyes. You look like a raccoon.”

“Too late now. Have you seen my sunglasses?”

Connie pointed to the kitchen table.

I slipped the glasses on. “I just can’t stop crying, Connie! People at the funeral are bound to think I’m overreacting. I’m not a member of the family, and I didn’t even know Katie.”

“If anyone is so rude as to ask, I’ll tell them you’re menopausal.”

“Thanks heaps!” I found myself chuckling in spite of my otherwise grim mood.

Connie picked up her key ring from the kitchen table. I followed behind and waited patiently as she locked the house and backed her Honda out of the barn. Ten minutes later we arrived at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, but even though the funeral wasn’t
scheduled to start until ten, the parking lot was already full. A young man wearing an international orange slip-on vest with “parking attendant” stenciled on it in black directed us across the street.

Exasperated, Connie backed out of the church driveway, turned, and continued through the light at High. She pulled into the lot behind the Hillcrest Nursing Home, shut off the engine, and set the parking brake with a grinding, upward jerk. As we got out of the car, I noticed three old codgers sitting in plastic lawn chairs on the front porch of the nursing home, deep in conversation, soaking up the early-morning sun. They were dressed in shapeless sweaters in spite of the balmy weather. A male attendant in a green uniform loitered nearby, his eyes on scan.

Connie waved to one of the patients, a silver-haired gentleman wearing a red cardigan. “That’s old Mr. Schneider, Dennis Rutherford’s father-in-law. He’s got Parkinson’s, poor thing.” Connie shook her head. “I know Dennis would rather be caring for him at home, but it’s just too much. Maggie can’t cope.” She glanced back at the line of old men, sitting quietly in the sun, nodding at the mourners as they passed by the porch on their way to St. Philip’s.

“They’re a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus,” Connie said with a wistful smile. “Always nodding and agreeing with each other, no matter what. In the afternoon when the sun gets too hot, they move around into the shade on the south side of Hillcrest and watch the animals come and go from the vet’s instead of paying attention to what’s going on along High.”

I followed Connie as she headed up the sidewalk. “Hello, Mr. Schneider!” she called.

Mr. Schneider turned in our direction. “Why, hello, Ms. Connie! Say, whose funeral is it today? Not one of us, I know. I checked it out—no empty beds!” He snorted with laughter.

“It’s Katie Dunbar, Mr. Schneider. The girl who disappeared a while back.”

“Katie Dunbar.” He grasped his knee to steady his trembling hand. “I remember Katie Dunbar. Taught her in American history. Not a scholar, by any means, but turned in a fairly decent paper on the triangle trade first semester. Second semester, though, her grades went into the toilet. Squeaked by with a D, as I recall.” He shook his head. “Frieda and Carl must be devastated. Devastated.”

“I’m sure they are, Mr. Schneider.” She patted his other hand where it rested on the head of his cane.

“Send them my condolences, will you?”

“I certainly will.”

While we waited for the light at the intersection to change, Connie mentioned that Mr. Schneider had taught at the high school well into his late sixties. “Pity he’s now so frail.”

“Yes, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with his mind or his sense of humor.”

As we crossed High Street, Connie explained that St. Philip’s Parish was one of the oldest in Maryland, founded in 1697 when a chapel was built by a group of Anglicans on that very spot. The present building dated from 1923 after a fire had destroyed the original
structure. The “new” church was of sturdy red brick with an elegant white wooden steeple that seemed to scrape the sky. Stubby transepts hinted at the cruciform shape of the building. From the louvered panels in the bell tower, the somber tolling of a tenor bell rolled out across the town and deep into the countryside, drawing us in. It seemed to resonate on the same frequency as my body, sending chills racing down the back of my neck and skittering along my spine.

Among the last to arrive, Connie and I accepted a printed bulletin from a solemn usher stationed in the nave and made our way as silently as possible to vacant seats he indicated in the back of the sanctuary. The door to our pew groaned alarmingly, and two old dears with stiffly permed hair and hats like fat headbands turned disapproving frowns on us as we eased past an elderly couple rigidly determined to remain seated next to the aisle. I stumbled over a kneeler and, with a mind to the old dears, suppressed an “ouch” as my hand hit the hymnal rack.

Near the front of the church and to the left, an organist with more enthusiasm than talent, her back to the congregation, was halfway through “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” her body swaying from side to side as she played. When the chorale melody kicked in, she leaned back so far I feared she might topple off the organ bench.

To the right, opposite the organ, stood the pulpit, rising gracefully from a stone floor with a circular staircase leading up to it. Directly over the pulpit hung an acorn-shaped cap of carved stone. Fine stained glass
windows lined the sanctuary. I peeked over the tops of my sunglasses at the one nearest me, a colorful depiction of Christ calming the sea. The early-morning sun blazed through the windows, scattering a patchwork of dazzling jewels over the heads, shoulders, and backs of the congregation, shapes that buckled and bent as they moved; distorted triangles that slid along an arm, down a leg, to fall into bright, geometric puddles on the floor. I was thinking of a kaleidoscope Emily had played with as a child when I suddenly became aware that the organ music had stopped. A rustling from the front made me turn my attention again to the altar, where a young African-American girl, her hair an elegant sculptured cap, had stepped out from the choir stalls to stand near the organ. Within seconds the haunting, unaccompanied strains of “Amazing Grace” filled the sanctuary, her sweet soprano voice soaring into the rafters.

Behind us the west doors opened, and through them glided Katie’s casket, drenched in flowers, three pallbearers in dark suits on each side, guiding it, towering over it. The shortest of the six pallbearers must have been at least six feet. The only one I recognized was Bill from Ellie’s Country Store.

Connie inclined her head toward mine until our temples touched, her voice a husky whisper. “It’s the Jonas Green basketball team from the time Katie was in school. That’s Chip in the front on the side nearest us. I’m amazed they were able to get them all together.”

It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but
Katie’s former boyfriend appeared to be six feet five or six if he was an inch. His hair was straight, the color of strong tea, parted on the left and combed neatly to the side, where a single lock had escaped and hung, quivering, over his eyebrow. I’d never seen anyone who looked less like a murderer. Except maybe Ted Bundy.

Several rows up a too-tall toddler—she was probably standing on the kneeler—peered over the wooden pew, pointed a chubby finger, and shrilled, “Daddy!” None of the pallbearers appeared to notice. A woman who must have been her mother put an arm around the child and whispered something to her, her lips close to the little girl’s ear. The child sat down abruptly. Two older children, a boy and a girl, sat in the pew to the woman’s left, busily occupied with pencil stubs taken from the pew racks, using them to scribble on their bulletins and, when space on the bulletins gave out, on the backs of offering envelopes. “That’s Chip’s wife, Sandra, and their kids,” Connie explained.

The service continued with a congregational hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” which, according to the program, had been Katie’s favorite. In the front pew I could see the back of Mrs. Dunbar’s head, bowed while we sang. Next to her Mr. Dunbar stared stoically ahead. When Reverend Lattimore stepped up to deliver the eulogy, Mrs. Dunbar gazed at the rose-colored casket where it rested in the center aisle near the steps leading up to the choir. Bands of colored light streamed in from one of the windows, spilled
over the casket, and reflected off the white of Mrs. Dunbar’s hair, which had been coaxed into an old-fashioned French twist. She kept reaching up to touch it, perhaps to check for escaping strands or wayward hairpins. Or maybe the hairdo was simply unfamiliar. When we sang “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” a white gardenia pinned to her left shoulder trembled as she sobbed.

Connie and I waited until almost everyone had left the church before following the crowd outside. We exited through the west door and proceeded around the north transept, weaving through ancient headstones, some dating back to the eighteenth century, where the carving and inscriptions had been etched away by weather and the years.
Ashes to ashes
, I thought.
Dust to dust
.

The sun, high in the sky by now, slanted through elm and maple branches, casting dappled shadows on the tombstones. This was a day to live, not a day to die! Would anybody care as deeply for me when I died? Would Paul? Would Emily? My daughter and I had come a long way toward mending our relationship after she’d more or less gotten herself straightened out in college, but the fact that much as I tried, I could never mask my disapproval of the men in her life kept her at a distance.

Emily was attracted to the wounded birds and lame puppies of this world. I kept waiting for her to bring home a boyfriend who didn’t need rehabilitation, but despite our objections, last year she’d moved to Colorado Springs with a Haverford dropout named Daniel
Shemanski, who pierced his body in places I didn’t even want to think about and made a living massaging the slope-sore bodies of the almost rich and famous. He was asking everyone to call him Dante these days. Just Dante. One name, like Pavarotti or Cher or Madonna.