The Queen of Sleepy Eye (4 page)

“I'm sorry, Mom. I shouldn't have—”

“I don't know what came over me. Maybe tension. I drove for a long time not knowing if we'd reach civilization. Not one tree grew in that stinking desert. God was looking out for us.”

How could I argue with that?

“And, Amy, don't play your guitar in the motel room. Bonnie promises a peaceful night's sleep, or she returns her patrons' money. I don't want her to lose money over us.”

After Mom left with Bonnie, I knelt beside the bed to say the Lord's Prayer and added, “Help Mom remember her pinkie pledge about men.” The prayer stuck in my throat. I started again, “Lord, watch over Mom tonight. Don't let any drunk guys throw up on her.
Let her have a good time but not too good of a time. In Jesus' name, amen.”

Playing my guitar was like a warm glass of milk. At home, I'd close my bedroom door to play praise songs from youth group or my favorite Carole King or Linda Ronstadt songs. I loved “Desperado.” If Mom didn't have a man to keep her distracted, she'd request down-and-out country songs, usually something by Patsy Cline, the patron saint of broken hearts. There had been nights I sang “Crazy” until my voice had fatigued from an alto to a baritone, and then Mom would ask me to sing a Charley Pride song. Anticipating the day when I would no longer serenade Mom lifted my spirits. I read
Pride and
Prejudice
until the words blurred on the page. I turned off the light just before midnight.

* * *

IN MY DREAM, Lauren cowered in a jail cell. No matter how much I coaxed her, she wouldn't follow me down the hole I'd dug to break her out. She crawled to the edge just as another train horn shocked me awake. The lumbering cars shook the floor and bounced a framed sampler against the wall. Long after the caboose had passed my hands rested on my pounding chest. My mother's pillow lay plump and smooth. By the light of the motel's vacancy sign, I read my watch. 2:12. A key slid into the lock. I hated watching Mom stagger, so I turned to the wall and slowed my breathing.

Mom clicked on the bedside lamp and jumped on the bed. “Wake up,
fofa,
wake up! Oh, my sweet one, this town is magic. You aren't going to believe the good fortune that has come our way.”

I feigned a yawn and stretched before turning over to squint in the lamp's light. The odor of beer and cigarette smoke clung to Mom's clothes and hair. I breathed in deeply. Her face wore the sting of cold
like a mask. She lifted the covers. “Move over. I'm freezing.” The cold from her clothes penetrated my flannel nightgown. She kicked one shoe onto the linoleum floor, then the other.

I drew up my knees. “Don't you dare put your cold feet on me.”

“Do I have feet? I don't know. I stopped feeling them an hour ago.”

“Where have you been?”

“I can't wait to tell you.” She scooted closer.

I slipped off my socks for her. “Put these on first.”

She kissed my cheek.

“Your nose is like ice!” I wiped moisture from my cheek with the sheet. “And you got snot on me.
Gross!”

“Shh, you'll wake our neighbors.”

I doubted anyone actually slept in the motel, not with the trains marking off the hours like they did, but Mom was—is—indomitable. Once she snared an idea, her enthusiasm transformed her into a cliché. She was a raging storm, a force of nature, a bull in a china shop. I would listen to the adventure of her night in Cordial or never know peace in my lifetime.

With the socks on her feet, she locked arms with me. We lay on the same pillow, our heads touching.
“Querida,
sweetheart, Bonnie is destined to be the best friend I've ever had. She knows everyone in this town—”

“Does one of them own an extra transmission?”

Mom sniffed. “You can be such a little toad,
fofa.
This is good news. Listen now. She has an aunt, a
great
aunt who's desperate to find a caretaker for her home. She's been looking for months.”

Dread squeezed my heart. “Mom, we're not going to be here that long.”

“No, but we have to live somewhere until the car is fixed.”

“Mom …”

“Bonnie took me to see the house. It's a block from Main Street and so charming and big. We can sit on the front porch to drink lemonade, and we won't have to share a bedroom. There are
three
bedrooms. And the trees and lawn are huge. You can read your books in the shade. The house is like the Ponderosa.”

“A log cabin?”

“Just like that, only much, much bigger.”

I loved
Bonanza
. Lauren and I had watched reruns after school while eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. The only fight we'd ever had was over who would marry Little Joe. I imagined Lauren groaning with envy. “Tell me more.”

“Bonnie says there's a fireplace in the front parlor. We've never had a fireplace.”

We'd never had a parlor. Our rentals had been small, bland, and cold. A fireplace would be nice. “But still, we aren't going to be here that—”

“We'd be doing her aunt a favor. The house has been in Mrs. Clancy's family for three generations. The upkeep overwhelms her, and she worries that someone will break in—”

“And she expects us to protect her?”

Mom laughed. How I envied her ability to shrug off my fears.

“Mrs. Clancy won't be living with us. She built another house near the cemetery—imagine owning two houses.”

“Near a cemetery? That's creepy.”

“Why? Death is as natural as life,
querida.”

Hearing this from Mom, who crossed herself every time she walked by the hospital, only deepened my apprehension. What was she willing to do to keep me from attending college without her?

“Don't you see?” she said. “God is taking care of us.” Mom only visited church to light a candle when her period was late, but no one spoke of God's benevolence with more authority.

“What happens if Tommy finds a transmission tomorrow and the car is ready by the end of the week?” I asked.

“California, here we come!”

“Really?” A train sounded its whistle a long way off. “We should look inside the house before we agree to anything. Remember the apartment on Oak Street?”

She laughed again and pulled me into her embrace. “You only remember the bad. Bonnie says her aunt is a meticulous housekeeper. Someone like that would never have more than one cat and certainly not more than thirty.”

The train's whistle sounded again, only closer.

“We could have broken down in that horrible desert,” she said, “but we didn't. This is a nice town. Let's give it a try. Okay?”

Forget the Ponderosa.

The cabin, painted deep brown with startling white chink, was a multi-layered cake of Bavarian chocolate and marshmallow crème. The roof, a topping of raspberry shingles, quickened my pulse. Pines lorded the lush lawn surrounding the cabin—stout, anchored, beckoning. I half expected Lizzy Bennet's Lord Fitzwilliam Darcy to stride out the front door with his hunting rifle. I turned to apologize to Mom for pouting all morning. That's when I saw the sign over the mailbox:
Clancy and Sons Funeral Home,
Serving the North Fork Valley since 1920.

Mrs. Clancy, the owner, led us through the cabin, reading our caretaker duties from a clipboard. I walked as if folded in on myself, afraid to disturb the quietness, reluctant to discover what or who lay behind the closed doors. Mom's platform shoes
tap, tap, tap
ped on the wooden floors behind me. Mrs. Clancy clomped ahead, her broad hips dipping and rising with sluggish indifference. I stifled shushing her by biting my lip.

Mrs. Clancy stopped to swish a feather duster over porcelain figurines. “Death keeps no hours. You never know when clients will call or come knocking at the door.” She looked directly at me. “Don't put things off. You don't want to be caught unprepared.”

When she turned to continue the tour, I whispered in Mom's ear. “This place smells funny.”

Mom shooed my words away with a flip of her wrist. She bent forward to take in Mrs. Clancy's every word, like she would actually do any of the dusting. I knew better. We turned down a hall lined with more closed doors. Mrs. Clancy tucked the feather duster under her arm and hefted her shoulder against the closest door, which turned out to be a bedroom. Mom and I expelled breaths in unison. No one, living or dead, lay on the bed. Mrs. Clancy opened a window, and a playful breeze flicked the curtain's hem. Before she closed the door again, I imagined myself lying across the chenille bedspread, fingering its channels and lobes as I read about Lizzy Bennet's visit to Pembroke.

Mrs. Clancy brought me back to reality by slamming the door shut. “The girl can sleep there.”

A brass bed commanded attention in the room assigned to Mom. Breathy with excitement, Mom asked, “Will you be moving this furniture to your new home?”

“Good heavens, no. I've had my fill of old things. Dust traps, that's all they are. I ordered everything new—from the coffee pot to the brocade headboard—out of the Montgomery Ward catalog.”

Mom's eyes glistened with tears. I feared she would wrap her arms around Mrs. Clancy's mole-covered neck. “Mom has always wanted a brass bed,” I said and nudged Mom away from the room.

“Suit yourself,” Mrs. Clancy said, leading us into the kitchen.
“The kitchen door will serve as your main entrance. Only clients use the front door.”

The kitchen, painted a fleshy pink, reminded me of every other kitchen of every apartment and house we had ever rented. Cracked linoleum. A gorilla of a refrigerator. Pitted countertops. A match dispenser hanging by the gas stove added a sense of danger to the room. Off the kitchen, a brown sofa and two matching chairs pointed toward a television with a bulging screen and inquisitive rabbit ears. Beyond, an accordion partition served as a wall.

“What's behind the partition?” Mom asked. I dreaded Mrs. Clancy's answer.

“The business end of the cabin—my office, a chapel, the reposing room, and the casket showroom.”

Mom brushed past me to follow Mrs. Clancy. “Try to keep up, Amy.”

I agreed with Mom. Let's get the tour over and then we could say
Vaya con Dios, señora
with a clear conscience.

Mom stopped abruptly at the doorway of the casket showroom. Caskets hung on the walls and filled the floor space. The hair on my arms popped to attention. Burnished mahogany. Sun-warmed oak. Pine, rough and raw. When Mrs. Clancy flipped a switch, track lighting highlighted a metal casket, yawning open and tipped toward the middle of the room. A ring of finish samples lay among the tucks of satiny upholstery inside the casket. Mrs. Clancy snatched the ring to stash in a desk drawer. More to herself than to us, she said, “Everything in its place. A place for everything.”

With her hands clasped behind her back, her buttons struggled to hold the bodice of her blouse together, providing a keyhole view of her purely structural bra. “Besides the reposing room,” she said,
“this is the most important room in the house. You must keep the caskets shiny bright. Not one speck of dust or a single fingerprint must mar the finishes. You'll need to become familiar with the special cleaners kept in the maintenance closet. We keep the economy caskets in the attic. There's no need to climb up there today. The caskets are wrapped in plastic. Buying the caskets in bulk increases my margin, but the families don't need to know that. In a small market maximizing margin is important.”

I shook off the image of a small market for dead people—a storefront with a black wreath on the door and a sales banner taped to the window—and reentered the conversation in time to hear Mom say, “Amy loves to clean.”

At times like this I wished I'd been blessed with a tribe of siblings. I would say, “Excuse me, Mother, you're thinking of Jane or Laurie or Debbie or that little miscreant, Danny.” I must have groaned because Mom shot me a hard look. This was exactly why I was so determined to get to California.

Mrs. Clancy either missed or ignored our exchange. “To clean the pillow and overlay, I take them outside for a good shake every few days. No one wants to think of their loved ones sleeping with spiders.”

At the mention of spiders, I expected Mom to back out of the house spewing apologies, and we would be buying bus tickets by the end of the day. Instead, Mom played the part of a competent funeral home caretaker by taking the bedding from Mrs. Clancy and returning it to the casket.

Mrs. Clancy stepped in front of Mom to smooth the wrinkles out of the pillow and straighten the gathers in the overlay. “Like I said, death doesn't keep a schedule and doesn't mind one iota about upsetting your plans, so you must always be ready. Have your chores
done by ten o'clock in the morning seven days a week—earlier, once you get the routine down. I will be here Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. I leave earlier on the days I make a deposit at the bank. At all other times, I expect one of you to be here.”

Mom cocked her head as if assessing Mrs. Clancy. “You have such beautiful skin, the kind of skin that wins beauty pageants.”

“Well,” Mrs. Clancy said, taking a furtive look at her image in a casket's finish, “I was Miss Ranch Days back in 1931.”

“I believe you. I was Miss Sleepy Eye the year before Amy was born. I must show you the tiara I wore during my reign.”

“Do tell.”

“What do you use to keep your skin looking so lovely?”

Mrs. Clancy squared her shoulders and stretched her neck. “My mother forbade me to play in the sun. Freckles are for common girls, she used to say. Mother was born to Pittsburgh society. She ingrained the attributes of ladylike behavior in my sisters and me. I've never had one freckle on my face, not one. This high country sun is harsh. We—my sisters and I—wore bonnets everywhere we went.”

Sure enough. Not one freckle polluted Mrs. Clancy's face, but gray whiskers stood out from her chin like porcupine quills.

Mom followed Mrs. Clancy toward the front of the house. Whatever I'd imagined about Mr. Darcy and his hunting rifle evaporated the minute I joined Mom and Mrs. Clancy in the front parlor. Converted into a chapel, the red velvet draperies muffled the outside world. Rows of wooden folding chairs filled the darkened room, except for the space before the fireplace where a small podium served as an altar. On the far wall, a niche held the organ.

I sniffed the air again. Biology lab. Fourth hour. Just before lunch. “Is that formaldehyde I smell?”

Mrs. Clancy closed her eyes and drew in a breath. “I don't smell anything.”

“Mom, do you smell—?”

“Please excuse my daughter. She knows better than to discuss odors.” Mom looked at me with pleading eyes. “Amy, listen to Mrs. Clancy. We want to do a good job for her, so she won't have a worry in her head.”

Mrs. Clancy's eyebrows arched over the rims of her glasses. “In the course of your daily living, the chapel is completely off limits—excepting, of course, when you're attending to chores or hosting viewings. Do I make myself clear?”

“Hosting viewings? Us?” Mom asked.

“Yes, I'm done with all of that,” said Mrs. Clancy, and her shoulders sagged. “I've done everything myself for years. Too many of my friends are coming through here now. It's terribly difficult.” A shadow darkened her eyes and then quickly lifted. “But someone has to be here to stand with the family, manage the guest book, and set up the flowers. That will be you. There's a list of your duties by the back door. The families are as lost as kittens in their grief.” With a hanky from her belt, Mrs. Clancy buffed her fingerprints out of the organ's lacquered finish.

She looked Mom up and down. Dressed in fuchsia slacks, a broad white belt, and a polka-dot blouse, Mom dressed as if auditioning for a chewing-gum commercial. I relaxed. No one in their right minds would hire Mom to host anything as solemn as a viewing. Entertaining for Mom meant shaking martinis and pouring peanuts into a bowl.

Mrs. Clancy said, “You will wear a black dress hemmed below your knees during viewings out of respect for the deceased and the living. It's traditional. People expect it. I won't tolerate anything else.”

The blood drained from Mom's olive skin. Wearing black was
bad luck. At that moment, considering the spiders and the wearing of black, the deal was doomed. I turned toward the door.

“Amy looks beautiful in black,” Mom said.

I stopped, pivoted.

“Anyone greeting grievers will be expected to dress appropriately,” Mrs. Clancy said, lowering her glasses to meet Mom's gaze with leaden eyes.

“Of course, Mrs. Clancy, I understand, and you mustn't worry a bit that we won't follow your instructions to the smallest detail.”

“Here's the bottom line,” Mrs. Clancy said. “If you do a good job keeping the place clean and working with the families, I'll be happy and you'll have free rent. The minute I'm not happy is the minute you pack your bags. It's up to you.”

“Perfect! We'll do it.” Mom grasped her hand. Mrs. Clancy's chin folded like an accordion as she leaned away from Mom.

“There's something else.” Mrs. Clancy hefted two large suitcases. “There's a pad by the kitchen phone. If I leave to run errands, and let's see, during my lunch break, and, of course, any time I'm not here, you'll be taking the death calls.”

Mom's mouth dropped open.

“Especially at night. I'm an old woman. I need my sleep. Get the name of the deceased and who will take financial responsibility for preparing the body. And for goodness' sake, don't forget to ask for their address and phone number. Then call the mortician before you call my nephew, H. He'll pick up the body and get the deceased to the preparation room in the basement. Don't call me until the next morning, not one minute earlier than eight.”

Mrs. Clancy pushed the screen door open with her foot. “Making ends meet must be difficult as a single woman raising a daughter. I pay H twenty-five dollars to pick up a body. If you want to earn that
twenty-five dollars for yourself, you're free to use the hearse. H won't mind. He's an industrious boy. He reminds me of my own William. If there's work to be done, H will find it. And you don't have to worry about loading the body into the hearse. There's always someone—a spouse or a neighbor—who'll help you. We're all friends in Cordial. Between the two of you, I imagine you can wheel the body to the preparation room without any difficulties. I won't concern myself with who brings the bodies in. Unless I hear differently, I'll expect H is doing the job.”

Mrs. Clancy held a set of keys in front of Mom's face. She enumerated the purpose of each key before handing them over. She took a few steps before turning and setting her suitcases down again. “On days I'm meeting with families to make funeral arrangements or when memorial services are held in the chapel, there will be no cooking of any kind and no listening to the radio. Whispers only. No one should know you're here.”

Mrs. Clancy grunted when she picked up her suitcases.

Mom darted after her, catching her by a doughy arm. “How many … um, dead—”

“Terminology is everything in this business. You can be ‘dead tired' or a ‘dead ringer for a movie star.' You might drop an oar to be ‘dead in the water.' Sometimes life seems as senseless as ‘beating a dead horse.' There are dead ducks, dead weights, the dead of night, and Errol Flynn was drop-dead handsome. But the people brought here are ‘deceased,' ‘beloved,' or ‘dearly departed,' most certainly not
dead
.”

“Okay,” Mom said, perfectly cowed by Mrs. Clancy's speech. Mom called after her. “Wait a minute. How many dearly departeds come through here in, say, a week?”

Mrs. Clancy's shoulders fell under the weight of the question.
“As many as there will be, which usually means one, but we've had as many as five.”

“Cordial is a small town. I wouldn't expect that many.”

“We service the whole North Fork Valley. Buckley, Cedarton, Hanford. Sometimes Clearwater. Numbers vary.” Mrs. Clancy closed the trunk. “I expect I'll see you in church on Sunday,” she said with a tilt of her head toward the church across the street.

Mom held Mrs. Clancy's gaze. “Amy's the churchgoer of the family.”

Mrs. Clancy looked from Mom to me and back to Mom. “Families are more comfortable bringing their deceased to pious people.”

“Then they should be perfectly fine bringing their dearly departeds here. Amy reads her Bible every day, rain or shine.”