The Queen of Sleepy Eye (5 page)

Mrs. Clancy looked like she had bitten into a pithy apple. To hire Mom and me meant living closer to the edge than she liked. Mrs. Clancy closed her eyes. Whatever her imagination played out for her helped her overlook Mom's lack of church attendance. “Okay,” she said, getting into her car, “as long as the girl attends church services every Sunday.”

“She definitely will.”

“Do either one of you sing? We haven't had a good vocalist for in-house memorial services since Maude Hinckley passed on.”

Mom hooked her arm around my waist. “Amy sings like a meadowlark.”

“There's a twenty-dollar honorarium to split with the organist, if you're a hymn singer.”

Mom squeezed me tighter. “Oh my goodness, that's all she sings around the house. Her favorite is ‘Rock of Ages Clapped for Me.'”

Mrs. Clancy frowned at Mom.

“I play the guitar too,” I offered, hoping to divert Mrs. Clancy's attention from Mom's near-blasphemy.

The lines around Mrs. Clancy's mouth hardened, and her words jabbed at my chest. “There won't be any of that hippie music in the Clancy and Sons Funeral Home, not while I'm alive there won't. Hymns are what the Good Book tells us to sing, and that's all you'll sing. Guitars and tambourines have no place in church, so there's no place for them at Clancy and Sons. We must be cognizant of Satan's work. Guitars and the like draw us away from traditions of the faith and bring obscene rhythms into houses of worship. The last youth worker they sent to Spruce Street Church taught the kids those songs. I can assure you he didn't last long.”

I inched backward. Mom's grip tightened around my waist. Mrs. Clancy looked out the windshield, blinking and breathing as if she'd run up a long hill. When she spoke again, her voice flowed like a deep river. “When people are hurting, they lean on what they know, what's familiar. Traditions take us back to happier times when our voices melded with those we loved. Without traditions, we're adrift on an endless ocean.”

This wasn't the time to lecture Mrs. Clancy on the recent acceptance of the hymns she held so dear. Besides, I grew up singing hymns. “I love the hymns too,” I said. “I can play and sing anything in the hymnal. I was just offering in case the organist got sick or something.”

Mrs. Clancy pumped the accelerator before starting her long black Lincoln. The car roared to life. Mom made me wave until Mrs. Clancy turned toward her new home.

I'm not proud of what happened next. I was young, scared, and stuck in a lifeless burg. I spun out of Mom's grip to hurl accusations at her like a tennis ball machine. I accused her of planning the ill-fated
detour to Cordial. “You won't be happy until I'm a waitress at the nearest truck stop, will you?” I pushed through the chain-link gate. “I'm not you. I don't want to be you. And I am most certainly not going back into that cabin! Do what you like. I'm out of here.”

Mom leaned against a porch timber with her face buried in her hands and her shoulders heaving with sobs, a common occurrence in our lives.

She did things, impulsive things, things that seemed foolish from the outside, but underneath it all was love and a crazy kind of insatiable curiosity. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

“There is something I have to tell you,” she said, sniffing. “We left that drafty old house in Gilbertsville better than the day we moved in. We painted the whole house, made the curtains, and polished the floors. And yet, last winter, we almost froze to death because Mr. Cochran was so stingy with the coal. Fofa, I had no intention of paying him that rent money, but then he showed up. The pittance he returned to me is already spent.”

“Mom, what are you telling me?”

She blew her nose on the hanky she kept in her bra. “I have seven dollars and change in my wallet. And I still owe Bonnie for a night at the motel. That's all we have for food and shelter.” She crossed herself. “God forbid that one of us should get sick. Being caretakers for that old bag is the only way to keep a roof over our heads.”

I'd hidden over two hundred dollars among the pages of
Emma
to buy a bus ticket to California in this kind of emergency. But I hadn't planned on being forced to use the funds so early. The dorms didn't reopen until September. I hadn't saved enough for transportation and three months of rent. I was stuck in Cordial for the summer. That didn't mean I intended to be pleasant about my destiny.

“What about a black dress?” I asked.

“I'll make one. Bonnie's cousin owns the mercantile on Main. She gets a twenty-five percent family discount. We should be able to buy what we need.”

* * *

TWO DAYS LATER, I had my dress. Straight sleeves to my wrists. Collarless. Fitted with buttons up the back. Hemmed below my knee. Polyester double-knit. I'd had the dress on for five minutes, and my body already felt damp under the fabric. With the pair of black-patent shoes we'd found at St. John's thrift store, my viewing outfit was complete. Mom smoothed the fabric over my hips and tugged at a sleeve.

“I'm the one who looks dead,” I said, and yes, I was pouting.

That was the third time that day I'd caused Mom to cross herself. “Please, Amy, don't say such things. It's bad luck.” Our eyes met in the mirror. Hers were glossy with tears. “You look beautiful, very chic,” she said and pulled my hair into a ponytail, twisting and tucking the ends into place until she held a lumpy chignon in place. “You can wear the pearls Hank gave me.” She spat out the bad taste of his name. “The clean lines flatter your figure. You're just not used to seeing yourself as a woman.”

She was right about that. My silhouette surprised me. When had my boobs and hips swollen? “The dress is hot. I want to take it off.”

I'd known plenty of guys like H Van Hoorn. They were my lab partners in biology and chemistry, whose loud greetings in the hall I answered with lukewarm smiles, who ate lunch with me and Lauren, although we'd kept our backs slightly turned to avoid a stigmatizing association. They had names like Henry, Edward, and Roger. Dependable names. Boy Scouts. Audio-visual aides. Adoring. More than likely H stood for a name he didn't want anyone to know.

He proved how wrong I was when he presented his driver's license. “My name is H. Just H.” The youngest of eight children and the sixth boy, H's mom and dad had run out of names they liked starting with
H
. I learned all this and more when he knocked at the door to ask for a drink of water. The mower idled in the middle of the lawn.

“Could I bother you for another glass of water?” he asked.

He removed his John Deere cap to swipe sweat from his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt. That was when I saw his soft, dimpled
belly cantilevered over his belt.
Eew. Not good.
Under his hat, his scalp showed through his blond crew cut, and the sweat that stuck to his arm hairs made him sparkle in the sunlight. Even so, I envied him—his nose. It was straight and perfectly proportioned to his face.

“When I turn eighteen, I'm going to a lawyer to change my name to Hawk.” He said this without a bit of self-consciousness, like he was telling me he'd been accepted at Harvard, which I seriously doubted would ever happen for H.

“Sharp-shinned hawks migrate through here in the fall,” he said. “They're stealth fighters. They fly low to the ground, using their tails as rudders, to surprise small birds.
Accipiter straiatus,
that's the scientific name.
Accipiter
is Greek for ‘swift wing.'
Straiatus
comes from the Latin and refers to the striped wing of the juveniles. There's a neat place to observe them not too far from here.”

Just what I need, encyclopedic knowledge about hawks.

If Lauren had been there, she would have known just what to say, something cutting enough to get the door closed but oblique enough to leave H stunned silent. Despite my general loathing, I felt sorry for him. No one deserved a name starting with
H
. Think of one name that doesn't make you imagine old men spitting tobacco. Howard. Hamish. Harry. Harvey. Herman and Hector. Homer. Men with
H
names were born with yellow teeth and wispy gray hair.
Poor H.
I poured vanilla wafers on a plate and joined him on the porch, ignoring Lauren's admonishments against encouraging guys like H with too much attention.

He filled me in on his brothers and sisters. Some were already married with children, which made him Uncle H. How weird was that? The sister just a year older worked summers for their dad while she went to college in Alamosa, the coldest place in the U.S. of A., according to H. She wanted to be a teacher.

“My dad owns the ranch supply store on the highway,” he said, talking around the cookie he'd popped in his mouth. “He started with livestock fencing when we moved here three years ago. He did so well, he added the ranch wear. Van Hoorn's Ranch and Wear is the only place between here and Clearwater to buy a good pair of working boots, and that's thirty miles west. Maybe you've seen the store. It isn't much to look at from the outside, but we completely paneled the inside walls.”

H was conversational fly paper. He had a story about whatever happened to come up. There was no shaking him once he made a connection between my
uh-huhs
and his vast catalog of experiences.

“I could drive you out there sometime,” he said.

Not on your life.
“I have to stay here in case someone calls.”

H looked at my feet. “You should wear shoes with better arch support.”

The place between my toes had finally toughened enough to wear my rubber flip-flops, the official footwear of summer. “I do fine in these.”

“You pick the shoe to fit your job. Look at mine.” He stretched out his long legs and turned his boot to show off the topstitching and riveted seams. “And this is a Vibram sole. You won't see me falling on wet surfaces. The most important part of the shoe is what you can't see, like the steel in the toe that protects me from those whirling mower blades, and then there's the arch support. I can wear these babies from sunup to sundown. My feet never hurt. And they're waterproof.”

It was clear H had spent plenty of time listening to his father sell boots. “Do you work for your dad too?”

“Only the girls do. Dad says the guys have to get used to surviving on our own. I irrigate fields for a rancher and do yard work most days.”

In Cordial, you felt the softening of the day before the sun slid toward Bridger Mesa. The coolness lit on my bare shoulders like a silk scarf. I shivered with anticipation. H kept talking. He listed the brands of sensible shoes I should wear for domestic work. I yawned, looked at my watch, and ate the last three cookies on the plate.

I rose to go inside. “I have to get dinner ready.”

“You're real pretty, Amy.”

My face warmed, and I wondered what possessed the Boy Scout type. Did they feel honor bound to rescue homely girls from their poor self-esteem? Lauren, never one to soften her words, had told me I was homely enough to be cute but definitely not pretty. In a popped-pimple sort of way, having the truth out in the open had been a relief.

“You don't have to blush,” he said. “It's true. You look like one of those peasant girls in the old paintings Mr. Doorenbos hangs in World History, especially now with the sun shining through your hair.”

I stepped inside the screen door. “Mom hates dinner to be late.”

H put his face to the screen. “I'm going to kiss you before the end of summer.”

I slammed the kitchen door in his face, thought of opening it again to apologize, but quickly reconsidered when he rapped on the window. “I'll grow on you. I grow on everybody,” he shouted through the closed window.

The telephone rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I'd lived and worked in the funeral home for four whole days, waiting for that telephone to ring, my skin itching with anticipation. Honestly, I would have preferred a trip to the dentist. My heart beat so hard in my chest, I coughed just as Mrs. Clancy appeared at the casket room door. “This is why we must be ready at all times. Put the rag down and follow me.”

“Where?” I asked, but she was already gone.

Mrs. Clancy stood at the phone desk in the kitchen, resting her hand on the receiver. “Where's your mother?”

“Hanging the laundry.”
How convenient.

The phone rang again.

Mrs. Clancy turned the telephone to face me. “Answer the telephone. The sooner you know your job, the sooner I'll be able to come and go as I please.”

She handed me the receiver.

“What do I say?”

“Hello?” a male voice said on the other end of the line.

Mrs. Clancy's dentures clacked as she whispered in my ear. “Clancy and Sons Funeral Home, serving the North Fork Valley since 1920.”

“Georgia, is that you?” the man asked.

“No, this is Amy. Would you like to talk to Mrs. Clancy?”

Mrs. Clancy shook her head sharply and pushed a notepad and pen across the desk.

I repeated Mrs. Clancy's prompt and added, “How may I help you?”

“There's not much to be done now,” the man said, “but to bury her.”

My breakfast burned the back of my throat. “Oh.”

“Who's calling?” Mrs. Clancy asked.

“May I ask who's calling?”

Once Henry T. Bigelow hit his conversational stride, no detail seemed too mundane or intimate to exclude about his sister's death. “We found her just after we'd come back from moving the irrigation pipes up t' the mesa, you know. She was feeling poorly most of last week, complained about feeling tired, spent a lot of time in the outhouse, she did. Other than that, whatever was bothering her didn't seem to slow her down none. Bert says she was stronger than most men though she weren't much taller than my belt buckle. But she was getting old, that's for sure.”

Mrs. Clancy put her cheek to mine to listen in. She smelled sour like she hadn't taken a bath in a few days. Old people and twelve-year-old boys couldn't smell themselves coming or going. I breathed through my mouth.

The man continued his reverie. “We knowed something was wrong when we didn't smell no bacon from the kitchen. It wasn't
like her, though, to leave good meat on the counter where the flies could get to it. Bert swore up and down, but he wrapped the bacon up neatlike 'cause that's how Mildred always done it. Then he goes stomping off 'cause he says we'll be needing some more ice here pretty quick. Bringing the ice up from the ice house, that was Mildred's job. She done got the cows milked and the cream skimmed before she lay down in her daffodil bed to die.”

Mrs. Clancy took the phone. “Henry T. Bigelow, you old coot.” She shook her finger at the receiver. “Don't be rattling off a bunch of nonsense. The sooner we get Mildred in here, the better she'll look come viewing day.”

Whatever Henry T. Bigelow said made Mrs. Clancy roll her eyes. “Suit yourself, Henry, but you wrap her up nice. I won't be picking manure out of her hair. And make sure she doesn't roll around that trailer. Do you hear me, you old fool?”

* * *

THE DOORBELL RANG. Mom and I huddled behind her bedroom door.

Mrs. Clancy bellowed, “What are you doing? Not through the kitchen. For heaven's sake, we have a ramp out back.”

“The trapdoor's in the hall, ain't it, Georgie?” asked a male voice I recognized as Mr. Bigelow.

“Henry, people stopped calling me Georgie fifty years ago.”

“I think it's been more like sixty, don't you, Bert?”

“Bring her in then, you old fool.”

Men shuffled and grunted in the hall, and the floor groaned under their weight. One uttered an epitaph no one would dare chisel into a headstone. Mrs. Clancy called for me, but Mom held me tightly.

“Not yet,
fofa
. Not yet. Stay here.”

“Are you happy, Henry?” asked Mrs. Clancy.

“I'd heard about the chute, but I never believed it. Thanks, Georgie, that settles my mind a bit.”

“Now get out of here. I've got work to do.”

Outside, sparrows chirped and bicycle tires clattered over gravel. “Mom, I'll be okay. They have her in the basement. I don't want to make Mrs. Clancy mad.”

Mom crossed herself and glanced toward heaven. “I must be crazy. Blessed Mary, what was I thinking? A funeral home? Dead people in the basement? I never should have brought you here,
fofa.”
She pulled her suitcase off the closet shelf and threw it open. With a shove, she pushed me toward the door. “Amy, go pack. We can't stay here.” She scooped handfuls of satin and lace out of the dresser drawer. “Why are you standing there? Go tell that woman we're moving out.”

I took the wad of lingerie from Mom's hands. “Mom, really, we've been in tough places before. This isn't any different—”

“Oh,
fofa,
you don't know. Nothing good can come of this.”

“We could pray.”

“Don't start with me, Amy.”

I returned her lingerie to her pleading hands. “Fine, where exactly do you propose we go? And how will we get there? Perhaps Prince Charming will pick us up.”

“Yes, that's what we need.” Mom rifled through her purse. “I wouldn't call him Prince Charming, but he seemed friendly enough, and he has a big truck.” Mom dumped her fat wallet and several tubes of lipstick onto the bed. “He wrote his name and phone number on a napkin.” Out came the embroidered hanky I'd made for her in Blue Birds and a bundle of coupons. “I wasn't going to tell you. He bought me a drink, just one. I think his name is Bruce. He offered his help, said to call if we needed anything.” She held
up a cocktail napkin. “Here's the number. I'll call while you talk to Mrs. Clancy.”

I blocked the path to the door.

“Amy, please, I can't stay here.”

I ignored Mom's violation of her pinkie pledge about men and softened my voice like you would to coax a kitten out of a tree. “Living here is ideal. You were right about that. We don't pay rent. It's so nice to have a washing machine and clothesline right here. The flower garden is pretty, the prettiest we've ever had. And that boy H will keep the lawn nice. We only have to treat the families with kindness and keep the place tidy. We can do that. You're the kindest person I know.”

“There is a dead person in this house at this very moment.”

“I know. It's hard. Think of something else. Think of how brave you were after Daddy died. You searched and searched for the perfect place to raise me, and you found Gilbertsville. And remember how we ate popcorn on the porch and waited for the first call of the loons on a summer night? Remember baking lavadores for the carnival? I love those cookies. Even old Mrs. Prinzki wanted the recipe. And Mom, think of the night of the Sleepy Eye pageant, how beautiful you felt on the runway with every eye in the auditorium watching just you.”

Mom stood taller. “Yes. You're right. We have to be strong.” She leaned into the mirror to check her reflection. “Hand me a tissue.” Once she'd cleared her face of mascara, she knotted her blouse at her waist. “Look out the window. Make sure those terrible men are gone.”

I assured her they were. That wasn't good enough. Mom insisted I confirm that Miss Bigelow had been safely deposited in the basement workroom. I stood outside the bedroom door for a long time, waiting for my heart to settle behind my sternum. I slipped off my shoes to
walk from room to room. In the kitchen the drippy faucet filled my cereal bowl. A fan stirred the dust mites in the reposing room. A moth flitted around a lamp in the chapel. Ordinary things continued on as if Miss Bigelow was still there to see and hear them. At the closed basement door, I stopped to wonder who, besides her brothers (and that was debatable), would notice she was no longer there to tighten a dripping faucet or to turn off a fan or to shoo a moth out the door? Could someone leave so light a footprint on this earth that her passing was forgotten by the next rainfall?

That night, I lay in bed like a plank, trying but failing to think of anything but the dead body that lay in the basement. Surely Mrs. Clancy had covered Miss Bigelow with a blanket. Did she still wear her house dress? Her shoes? Her watch? Would the mortician check to see if she wore clean underwear? To settle my brain, I prayed for everyone I knew from
A
to
Z
. First, Annette, the only person I'd ever known with hair coarser than mine. She'd come new to my school in the middle of third grade, wearing her hair parted down the middle and held flat to her head by two barrettes the size of tongue depressors. Now that she was headed for the University of Illinois in Chicago, I prayed that she had cut her hair into one of those short curly-top dos that had become popular. I prayed for Bobby Kennedy's eleven children, although technically they weren't anyone I knew. They all paid so dearly for having a dad too noble for this world. I drew a breath. Maybe the same had been true of my father.

Carlos came to mind when I thought of names that began with
C
. He'd fled Cuba with his mother and sister when his father had been jailed for disagreeing with Castro. Carlos barely spoke English when he arrived at my elementary school, but he told me he loved me every day. I prayed for his father to join him in America.
D
is for dad. I know. It was useless to pray for someone who had already died,
but reason never seemed to matter when I thought of seeing my dad in heaven someday. When I'd been saved, I drove Mom to madness asking about Dad's standing with God. Mom finally assured me that he'd been a faithful member of the Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church.

“But he was Portuguese,” I said.

“It was a mixed marriage. His mother was a Lutheran.”

I figured the Lutherans preached a good come-to-Jesus sermon. They had churches in every city I'd ever visited, so I prayed for my dad, that he was enjoying the fine mansion Jesus had built for him and that he thought of me, even while basking in the glory of God's presence. I possessed a surety that he was there waiting for me.

Thank you, Lord.

By the time I got to the
V
s, Vinita Mae Lundquist popped into my head. She was Gilbertsville's old maid. She never opened her shades.
Lord, be her light.
I lay there listening to the clock ticking and the cricket's chirrup, and because I couldn't help myself, I wondered if Miss Bigelow had ever counted a cricket's chirrups to determine the temperature.

The latch of my bedroom door clicked and the whine of the hinges slid to a higher octave as the door opened. My mother trotted on tiptoe to my bed and lifted the covers to join me. There was no sense pretending to be asleep, so I scooted close to drape my arm over her stomach. At my touch, her belly softened with a sigh.

“There's something I have to tell you,” she said.

“You don't have to whisper.”

“I got a job at the hardware store.”

“But—”

“We need cash to pay for the car repairs and for living expenses in California.”

“We were going to do this funeral thing together.”

“You and I both know I won't answer any death calls or drive a hearse.”

“You can't leave me here alone.”

“In a couple months, you'll be living alone in Santa Barbara. This is good training for you. If you can manage a funeral home, you'll do fine in the big city.” She turned away from me. “I have to be there by seven o'clock. Farmers like to shop early.”

“How … when did you get a job?”

She yawned. “Last night at the Stop-and-Chomp when Bonnie and me—”

“Bonnie and
I
.”

“Bonnie and
me
stopped there for coffee and pie. I was just about to ask the waitress for an application when the Gartleys walked in. They own the hardware store on Main Street. Bonnie went to high school with Russell. They joined us and showed great interest in my story. The wife, I can't remember her name, wants to see my tiara. When I told them about the Pontiac, Russell offered me a job—Kno application, no nothing. The wife …” Mom yawned again. “I wish I could remember her name. She's nice too.”

Uh-oh.

“They have the cutest chicks at the store. You should come to see them when you're done cleaning.”

“I have to feed the mortician, remember?”

“Make sure Mrs. Clancy pays for the ingredients.”